Overview
JavaScript is Costa Rica's most common secondary barrier
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 93% |
| Antibot | 22% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.6% |
| JavaScript | 44.1% |
| Rate Limiting | 14.1% |
| TLS | 18.3% |
WAF protection reaches 93.0% of sites. Among secondary barriers, JavaScript deployment is highest at 44.1%, followed by CAPTCHA at 22.6% and Antibot at 22.0%. Rate Limiting (14.1%) and TLS (18.3%) are the lowest-adopted layers.
Barrier Landscape
JavaScript tops Costa Rica's active secondary defences
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 93% |
| Antibot | 22% |
| CAPTCHA | 22.6% |
| JavaScript | 44.1% |
| Rate Limiting | 14.1% |
| TLS | 18.3% |
| Has robots.txt | 79% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 13.9% |
WAF covers 93.0% of Costa Rica's 1,099 domains. JavaScript is the leading secondary barrier at 44.1%. CAPTCHA (22.6%) and Antibot (22.0%) are nearly equal. Rate Limiting at 14.1% is the least deployed of the six barriers.
Most Costa Rican sites carry at least two barriers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 4.7% |
| 1 barrier | 27.2% |
| 2 barriers | 36% |
| 3 barriers | 18.7% |
| 4 barriers | 8.6% |
| 5 barriers | 4.1% |
| 6 barriers | 0.6% |
Exactly two barriers is the modal configuration at 36.0% of sites. Single-barrier sites account for 27.2%. Only 4.7% of sites carry no barriers. Just over one quarter of sites (27.4%) deploy three or more barriers simultaneously.
Costa Rica's sites sit comfortably in the Easy access band
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.7 |
The median recommended retrieval tier is 2, meaning fewer than half of sites resolve at Tier 1 (Simple/plain HTTP). The mean of 1.71 reflects a majority skewing toward plain-HTTP retrieval, with a significant share requiring JavaScript rendering.
Most Costa Rican sites are Simple or Easy to access
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 46% |
| 2 - Easy | 40.8% |
| 3 - Moderate | 10.3% |
| 4 - Complex | 2.4% |
| 5 - Advanced | 0.6% |
46.0% of Costa Rica's sites are at Tier 1 (Simple), and a further 40.8% at Tier 2 (Easy). Together these two tiers account for 86.8% of all domains. Tier 3 (Moderate) covers 10.3%; Tiers 4 and 5 combined total 3.0%.
robots.txt
AI crawlers top Costa Rica's robots.txt bot categories
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 15.7% |
| SEO / search indexing | 12.5% |
| SEO audit tools | 12.2% |
| Commercial scrapers | 8.1% |
| Social / content scrapers | 6.4% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 4.5% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 0.5% |
AI crawlers are named in robots.txt on 15.7% of all 1,099 Costa Rican sites — the highest of any bot category. SEO/search bots appear on 12.5%, SEO audit tools on 12.2%. Commercial scrapers are cited on 8.1% of all sites.
Uniform rules are Costa Rica's most common robots.txt posture
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules (no path mixing) | 41.4% |
| Path-level mixed rules for same agent | 32.2% |
| Allow-only (no disallow rules) | 2.5% |
| Mixed AI posture (block some, allow others) | 2.7% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 2.6% |
79.0% of Costa Rican sites publish a robots.txt file. Of all sites, 41.4% use uniform per-agent rules with no path mixing. Path-level mixed rules account for 32.2%. Mixed AI posture — blocking some agents while allowing others — appears on 2.7% of sites.
GPTBot faces the most Disallow rules in Costa Rica's robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | 11.4% | 2.4% |
| CCBot | 8.6% | 1.1% |
| ClaudeBot | 8.5% | 1% |
| Google-Extended | 8.3% | 1.6% |
| Bytespider | 6.7% | 0.4% |
| meta-externalagent | 2.5% | 0.1% |
| ChatGPT-User | 5.8% | 2.5% |
| PerplexityBot | 6% | 1.9% |
| Applebot-Extended | 4.8% | 0.5% |
| OAI-SearchBot | 4.5% | 2.2% |
| anthropic-ai | 5% | 0.7% |
GPTBot carries Disallow rules on 11.4% of all Costa Rican sites — the highest block rate among AI agents. CCBot and ClaudeBot follow at 8.6% and 8.5%. ChatGPT-User has the widest explicit Allow rate at 2.5%.
Six Costa Rican sectors all name at least one bot to restrict
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Computer & Video Games | 100% |
| Design | 100% |
| Entertainment | 100% |
| Newspapers | 100% |
| Plastics & Polymers | 100% |
| Retail | 100% |
| Adult | 90% |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 90% |
| Chemicals | 90% |
| Comics & Animation | 90% |
| Foreign Language | 90% |
| General | 90% |
| Healthcare | 90% |
| Insurance | 90% |
| Mass Media | 90% |
Computer & Video Games, Design, Entertainment, Newspapers, Plastics & Polymers, and Retail each reach 100% named-bot Disallow rate — meaning every site in those sectors names at least one bot in a Disallow rule. Seven further sectors sit at 90%.
Costa Rica's Architecture, Automotive, and Publishing sites lead in allowing crawlers
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Architecture | 70% |
| Automotive | 70% |
| Photography | 70% |
| Publishing | 70% |
| Retail | 70% |
| Airlines | 60% |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 60% |
| Chemicals | 60% |
| Furniture | 60% |
| Oil & Gas | 60% |
| Plastics & Polymers | 60% |
| Science | 60% |
| Software & Dev | 60% |
| Telecom | 60% |
| Travel & Tourism | 60% |
Architecture, Automotive, Photography, Publishing, and Retail each show a 70% explicit bot Allow rate — the highest in Costa Rica. A further ten sectors have 60% of their sites naming at least one bot in an Allow rule.
Industry Patterns
Real Estate, Hospitality, and Jewellery are Costa Rica's hardest sectors to crawl
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Real Estate | 100% | 20% | 10% | 60% | 60% | 20% | 50% | 20% | Tier 3 |
| Hospitality | 90% | 20% | 0% | 60% | 30% | 40% | 60% | 20% | Tier 3 |
| Jewellery & Luxury | 100% | 10% | 10% | 40% | 50% | 50% | 50% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Equipment & Supplies | 90% | 40% | 10% | 60% | 20% | 10% | 60% | 10% | Tier 3 |
| Furniture | 100% | 40% | 30% | 40% | 0% | 50% | 60% | 20% | Tier 3 |
| Consumer Electronics | 80% | 20% | 20% | 50% | 30% | 40% | 80% | 20% | Tier 3 |
| Automotive | 90% | 20% | 10% | 30% | 20% | 50% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Computer Hardware | 100% | 40% | 20% | 40% | 50% | 20% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Human Resources | 100% | 60% | 50% | 30% | 30% | 20% | 70% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Retail | 100% | 10% | 0% | 60% | 10% | 10% | 100% | 50% | Tier 2 |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 100% | 40% | 40% | 30% | 30% | 20% | 90% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Customer Services | 100% | 20% | 30% | 60% | 30% | 20% | 60% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Insurance | 80% | 20% | 20% | 40% | 0% | 10% | 90% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Restaurants | 90% | 40% | 30% | 70% | 50% | 10% | 50% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Sporting Goods | 100% | 20% | 30% | 50% | 40% | 30% | 70% | 0% | Tier 2 |
Real Estate heads the difficulty ranking with a mean recommended tier of 2.80 and a median of 3. Hospitality and Jewellery & Luxury share mean tiers of 2.70, also at median 3. Equipment & Supplies and Furniture follow at mean 2.60.
Oil & Gas, Manufacturing, and Crafts are Costa Rica's most accessible sectors
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wine & Spirits | 100% | 40% | 20% | 50% | 30% | 0% | 80% | 40% | Tier 2 |
| Food & Beverages | 100% | 50% | 40% | 60% | 50% | 10% | 70% | 20% | Tier 2 |
| Apparel & Fashion | 100% | 20% | 30% | 70% | 30% | 30% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Maritime | 90% | 10% | 0% | 40% | 10% | 30% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Medical Devices | 80% | 10% | 10% | 30% | 10% | 20% | 90% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Renewable Energy | 70% | 0% | 10% | 50% | 10% | 30% | 70% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Pharmaceuticals | 80% | 10% | 10% | 20% | 10% | 20% | 70% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Design | 100% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 20% | 30% | 100% | 30% | Tier 2 |
| Mail & Delivery | 70% | 40% | 10% | 10% | 0% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Reference | 80% | 50% | 20% | 30% | 10% | 10% | 60% | 40% | Tier 2 |
| Textiles & Nonwovens | 100% | 10% | 20% | 50% | 10% | 20% | 80% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Transport & Logistics | 70% | 50% | 10% | 20% | 0% | 20% | 80% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Crafts | 100% | 20% | 20% | 60% | 20% | 10% | 60% | 10% | Tier 2 |
| Manufacturing | 80% | 10% | 10% | 30% | 0% | 40% | 70% | 0% | Tier 2 |
| Oil & Gas | 90% | 10% | 30% | 50% | 10% | 10% | 70% | 0% | Tier 2 |
The most accessible sectors in Costa Rica reach a mean recommended tier of 1.90, shared by Oil & Gas, Manufacturing, and Crafts. All carry a median tier of 2, indicating retrieval remains manageable across these industries.