Overview
Swedish sites lean on WAF and JavaScript with little visible friction
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 94.1% |
| Antibot | 20.3% |
| CAPTCHA | 21.8% |
| JavaScript | 44.5% |
| Rate Limiting | 12.1% |
| TLS | 16.8% |
WAF (94.1%) and JavaScript (44.5%) are both above their global averages of 93.1% and 41.3%. TLS fingerprinting at 16.8% is well below the global 17.7%. CAPTCHA (21.8%) is also below the global 23.1%. Sweden defends through architecture, not visible friction.
Barrier Landscape
JavaScript is Sweden's most elevated secondary barrier
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 94.1% |
| Antibot | 20.3% |
| CAPTCHA | 21.8% |
| JavaScript | 44.5% |
| Rate Limiting | 12.1% |
| TLS | 16.8% |
| Has robots.txt | 80.6% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 14.8% |
WAF (94.1%) leads, above the global 93.1%. Among secondary barriers, JavaScript at 44.5% is the most elevated — 3.2 points above the global average. TLS at 16.8% is 0.9 points below the global benchmark.
Most Swedish sites carry two barriers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 4.2% |
| 1 barrier | 28.7% |
| 2 barriers | 37.1% |
| 3 barriers | 17.9% |
| 4 barriers | 7.6% |
| 5 barriers | 4.2% |
| 6 barriers | 0.3% |
Only 4.2% of sites present no barriers. Two barriers is the modal outcome at 37.1%, with one barrier at 28.7%. Sites at three or more account for 29.8%.
More than half of Swedish sites are Simple to access
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.6 |
A median of 1 and mean of 1.64 confirm that more than half of Swedish sites resolve at Tier 1, despite JavaScript adoption running above the global average.
More than half of Swedish sites are Simple to access
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 50.6% |
| 2 - Easy | 38% |
| 3 - Moderate | 9.3% |
| 4 - Complex | 1.6% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0.5% |
Just over half of Swedish sites resolve at Tier 1. Tier 3-plus (11.4%) is concentrated in Beauty & Cosmetics, Computer Hardware, and Jewellery & Luxury — the sectors where Sweden posts its above-average difficulty scores.
robots.txt
AI crawlers top Sweden's robots.txt bot categories
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 16.1% |
| SEO / search indexing | 12.3% |
| SEO audit tools | 14.1% |
| Commercial scrapers | 8.4% |
| Social / content scrapers | 5.9% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 4.9% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0.3% |
16.1% of all 1,111 Swedish sites name at least one AI crawler — the highest category by a clear margin. SEO audit tools (14.1%) and SEO/search indexers (12.3%) follow. Monitoring bots (0.3%) are near-absent from public declarations.
Uniform rules are Sweden's most common robots.txt posture
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules (no path mixing) | 43% |
| Path-level mixed rules for same agent | 32.6% |
| Allow-only (no disallow rules) | 2.3% |
| Mixed AI posture (block some, allow others) | 2.4% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 2.6% |
19.4% of sites publish no robots.txt. Uniform posture (43.0%) leads, ahead of path-mixed (32.6%). The Mixed-AI share (2.4%) shows a subset applying different rules to different AI agents.
GPTBot faces the most Disallow rules in Sweden's robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | 12.2% | 2.3% |
| CCBot | 9.2% | 1.4% |
| ClaudeBot | 8.8% | 1.2% |
| Google-Extended | 8.9% | 1.5% |
| Bytespider | 7.3% | 0.4% |
| meta-externalagent | 3% | — |
| ChatGPT-User | 6.4% | 2.4% |
| PerplexityBot | 5.7% | 1.7% |
| Applebot-Extended | 5.3% | 0.5% |
| OAI-SearchBot | 4.2% | 1.8% |
| anthropic-ai | 5.5% | 0.9% |
Values are percentages of all 1,111 Swedish sites. Sweden applies consistently high blocking across all major AI agents — GPTBot (12.2%), CCBot (9.2%), Google-Extended (8.9%), ClaudeBot (8.8%) — a systematic stance across providers, not selective by agent.
Every Swedish Food & Beverages site names a bot to restrict
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Computer & Video Games | 100% |
| Design | 100% |
| Entertainment | 100% |
| Food & Beverages | 100% |
| Retail | 100% |
| Visual Art | 100% |
| Adult | 90% |
| Apparel & Fashion | 90% |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 90% |
| Comics & Animation | 90% |
| Crafts | 90% |
| General | 90% |
| Mass Media | 90% |
| Nanotechnology | 90% |
| Newspapers | 90% |
Food & Beverages reaches 100% — every sampled Swedish site in the sector names at least one crawler in a Disallow rule. This is Sweden's most distinctive sector finding. Nanotechnology at 90% is a notable secondary entry.
Sweden's Facilities Services sites lead in explicitly allowing crawlers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Facilities Services | 80% |
| Airlines | 70% |
| Investment | 70% |
| Photography | 70% |
| Publishing | 70% |
| Retail | 70% |
| Science | 70% |
| Sporting Goods | 70% |
| Architecture | 60% |
| Crafts | 60% |
| Farms & Ranches | 60% |
| Food & Beverages | 60% |
| Furniture | 60% |
| Graphic Design | 60% |
| Nanotechnology | 60% |
Facilities Services (80%) is Sweden's top allow-list entry. Food & Beverages (60%) appears here despite reaching 100% in the Disallow chart — some sites in the sector name bots to restrict while others explicitly allow them.
Industry Patterns
Jewellery & Luxury is Sweden's hardest sector to access programmatically
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jewellery & Luxury | 100% | 20% | 10% | 30% | 30% | 60% | 70% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Computer Hardware | 90% | 20% | 0% | 30% | 30% | 20% | 80% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 90% | 40% | 20% | 50% | 30% | 10% | 90% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Hospitality | 100% | 30% | 10% | 60% | 20% | 30% | 70% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Apparel & Fashion | 90% | 10% | 20% | 50% | 10% | 40% | 90% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Human Resources | 100% | 70% | 60% | 40% | 40% | 20% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Equipment & Supplies | 90% | 40% | 20% | 50% | 30% | 0% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Retail | 100% | 0% | 0% | 60% | 20% | 20% | 100% | 50% | Tier 2 |
| Consumer Electronics | 90% | 10% | 10% | 50% | 10% | 20% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Customer Services | 100% | 10% | 20% | 40% | 20% | 30% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Medical Devices | 100% | 0% | 0% | 50% | 10% | 10% | 90% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Public Safety | 100% | 20% | 40% | 50% | 10% | 20% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Sporting Goods | 90% | 10% | 10% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Textiles & Nonwovens | 100% | 0% | 20% | 30% | 10% | 30% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Automotive | 100% | 10% | 10% | 50% | 20% | 40% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
Jewellery & Luxury (2.70) leads, with Computer Hardware (2.65) close behind. Beauty & Cosmetics (2.50) ranks third. Hospitality (2.40) follows. Apparel & Fashion and Human Resources both sit at 2.30.
Seven Swedish sectors share the most accessible tier floor
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Design | 100% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 30% | 100% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Mail & Delivery | 70% | 40% | 10% | 10% | 0% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Real Estate | 100% | 40% | 20% | 60% | 50% | 0% | 50% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Transport & Logistics | 70% | 50% | 10% | 20% | 0% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Banking | 100% | 20% | 20% | 30% | 10% | 10% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Manufacturing | 80% | 10% | 10% | 30% | 0% | 40% | 70% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Reference | 90% | 60% | 30% | 50% | 30% | 10% | 60% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Visual Art | 100% | 30% | 20% | 30% | 0% | 20% | 100% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Adult | 100% | 40% | 40% | 80% | 10% | 20% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Airlines | 100% | 20% | 10% | 70% | 20% | 20% | 80% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Ceramics & Pottery | 90% | 0% | 10% | 50% | 0% | 10% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Crafts | 100% | 30% | 30% | 50% | 20% | 10% | 90% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Events | 100% | 10% | 10% | 90% | 30% | 0% | 70% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Import & Export | 100% | 30% | 40% | 40% | 0% | 40% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Libraries | 100% | 10% | 10% | 70% | 0% | 10% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
Seven sectors share the 1.80 floor — Adult, Airlines, Ceramics & Pottery, Crafts, Events, Import & Export, and Libraries. Four sectors cluster at 2.00 at the top of the accessible group.