State of Web Access2026
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State of Web Access 2026

The web isn't
open by default.

Most of the web doesn't want to be read by machines — and it's built the defences to prove it. This is the largest audit of web access controls ever published.

See how Zyte helps access and unlock web data at real scale.

State of Web Access 2026

See how Zyte helps access and unlock web data at real scale.

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24,898websites
230countries
110industries
Share of top landing pages with no access barrier
Share of sites
Open (no barrier)18.5%
Barrier present81.5%

Open access

Less than a fifth of the web is truly open

Only 18.5% of the world's most-visited landing pages operate without any technical barrier to automated access. The rest have built walls.

Access Barriers

A worldwide firewall guards the web

Web Application Firewalls are websites' most used access control technique.

Access barrier adoption across the world's most-visited landing pages
Adoption
WAF92.4%
Antibot18.5%
CAPTCHA22.6%
JavaScript40.6%
Rate Limiting22.1%
TLS13.8%

Barrier Stacking

Most websites run one or two access barriers

18.5%
30.9%
24.7%
12%
5.3%
7.5%

AI Crawlers

Four in 10 websites block AI crawlers

27% of websites block all crawlers. 12.7% explicitly target AI bots.

1
OpenAI
GPTBotOpenAI
2
Common Crawl
CCBotCommon Crawl
3
Anthropic
ClaudeBotAnthropic
4
Google
Google-ExtendedGoogle
5
ByteDance
BytespiderByteDance
6
Meta
meta-externalagentMeta

Hardest Industry

Fashion is the web's most restrictive sector

57% of fashion sites require Moderate or harder access infrastructure.

7.1%Simple
35.7%Easy
29.6%Moderate
19.4%Complex
8.2%Advanced