Bots Now Outnumber Humans on the Internet, Led by a US Traffic Surge

The internet has crossed a historic threshold: bots now generate more web traffic than humans, accounting for 57.4% of all web requests globally compared to 42.6% from human users, according to new analysis from Decodo. The United States alone generates more than half (53.5%) of all global bot traffic, placing it comfortably ahead of every other country.

The surge is being driven by an explosion in AI-driven web activity. During 2025, agentic AI traffic — autonomous AI agents browsing the web on users' behalf — grew by approximately 7,851% year-on-year, while overall AI-driven traffic increased by around 187%.

Key Highlights

● Bots now outnumber humans online — 57.4% of global web traffic vs. 42.6% human, for the first time on record.

● The US dominates bot traffic — generating 53.5% of the global total, far ahead of Germany (8.2%) and the Netherlands (5.6%).

● Agentic AI traffic exploded — up ~7,851% year-on-year in 2025, with overall AI traffic up ~187%.

● AI agents are shopping, not just browsing — 77% of agentic AI activity reached product and search pages in 2025.

● Blanket bot-blocking is becoming counterproductive — businesses are being urged to distinguish legitimate AI crawlers from malicious bots to stay visible in AI-driven discovery and shopping.

Bot activity as a share of overall traffic varies sharply by country. While bots make up 43.6% of U.S. web traffic and 45% in Germany, that figure climbs to 61.3% in the Netherlands and 73.7% in Singapore. Iran recorded the highest share globally, with bots responsible for 81.4% of all web traffic — followed closely by Ireland at 71.1%.

Much of this growth stems from AI assistants and agents that now browse websites to answer questions, compare products, and recommend services for consumers. Decodo found that 77% of agentic AI activity reached product and search pages during 2025, showing how deeply AI systems are embedding themselves into the pages where purchasing decisions actually happen.

Retail and eCommerce sites remain a top destination for this automated traffic, accounting for roughly 13% of successful automated requests analyzed, while a separate study found retail made up 62.5% of AI training crawler activity — underscoring how critical it's becoming for businesses to keep product data accessible to legitimate AI systems.

Decodo CEO Vaidotas Juknys noted that blocking every bot is an understandable instinct, but not every automated visitor is malicious, and that the agents crawling websites today may become how customers discover brands tomorrow.

As a result, businesses are being urged to abandon blanket bot-blocking in favor of behavior- and identity-based filtering — allowing trusted AI crawlers through while blocking scraping, fraud, and credential attacks. The implications extend beyond security teams: marketing, eCommerce, and analytics functions now need to understand how AI systems access their sites to keep product visibility strong while accurately separating human from automated traffic in performance metrics.