Anubis provides a proof‑of‑work (PoW) gateway that mitigates large‑scale web scraping by requiring visitors to solve a lightweight computational challenge similar to Hashcash. By adding minimal latency for legitimate users while significantly increasing the cost for automated scrapers, it helps sites protect their data and reduce server load.
Funding
Funding not disclosed
Founders
Product
Problem
Websites are increasingly targeted by large‑scale automated scrapers, especially AI companies, which consume bandwidth, overload servers, and expose proprietary data. Traditional defenses either block legitimate users or add significant latency, harming user experience.
Solution
Anubis implements a lightweight proof‑of‑work (PoW) gateway that presents visitors with a Hashcash‑style computational challenge. For human users the extra processing time is negligible, while automated scrapers incur substantial cost, deterring mass data extraction. The system augments PoW with browser fingerprinting to identify trusted browsers and bypass the challenge for legitimate traffic, preserving a seamless experience. By raising the economic barrier for scrapers, Anubis helps site operators protect content, reduce server load, and maintain availability.
Target Audience
Primary customers are website operators, content publishers, and SaaS platforms that need to protect their sites from automated scraping while maintaining a smooth experience for real users.
Features
- PoW challenge based on modern JavaScript, requiring minimal CPU for individual users but scaling cost for high‑volume bots
- Integration of browser fingerprinting (e.g., font rendering analysis) to automatically whitelist legitimate browsers
- Transparent fallback that presents the challenge only when fingerprinting cannot verify trustworthiness
- Compatibility with standard web stacks; deployable as a middleware layer or reverse‑proxy module
- Minimal added latency for genuine users, preserving site performance and SEO rankings