Most Web Traffic May Not Be Generated by Humans

Humans may have just lost web traffic bragging rights to the bots. Cloudflare says automated systems, including AI "agents" that roam the web with little human input, now generate 57.3% of all HTTP requests to HTML content, edging out humans at 42.7%, per NBC News. "That happened faster than I predicted," CEO Matthew Prince posted on X, noting he hadn't expected such a flip until 2027. Because AI services can hit thousands of sites in the time a human might visit a handful, their traffic share has surged in the past six months, Prince tells NBC.

Forbes cites another report that found AI-driven traffic ballooned eight times faster than human traffic last year. Prince tells NBC he's "stunned" by the speed of the shift and argued it could reshape both the web's size and its business model. The internet actually shrank between 2015 and 2025, he notes, citing research that showed a large chunk of older pages had vanished, but he adds that AI is now fueling rapid new growth and easier content creation.

As for concerns about a "dead internet" of bots talking to other bots, Prince pushed back, saying AI is broadening who can publish online. One looming problem, from his perspective: "Bots don't click on ads." That's why he's now floating charging automated systems for access to content, potentially making the web cheaper—or even free—for human users. "It's going to be pay to crawl," he noted online. At least one person takes issue with Cloudflare's stats.