Bot protection on 29 websites: vendors named in our notes
Wield's registry covers 29 sites. The notes name a bot-protection vendor on 9 of them: Akamai on 6, PerimeterX/HUMAN on 2 and AWS WAF on 1. On 8 of those 9, the vendor gates automated requests. Cloudflare sits in front of 4 more sites without challenging reads. Wield does not solve these checks. When a site shows one, Wield stops and asks the user to solve it in their own tab.
Key finding
Only vendors named in the registry's notes count. Nothing here is inferred from headers. Akamai is the most common named vendor, and it gates requests on five German sites. Wield's run results on the gated sites vary. It passed on five of eight, partly passed on one and failed on two.
Vendors by site
| Vendor | Sites | What the notes say |
|---|---|---|
| Akamai (gating) | bahn.de, zalando.de, idealo.de, eventim.de, mobile.de | curl gets a 403 on each. bahn.de and zalando.de also refuse automated browsers. |
| Akamai (named, not gating) | kleinanzeigen.de | Akamai is present but does not gate the search results page. |
| PerimeterX/HUMAN (gating) | walmart.com, zillow.com | walmart.com shows a "press and hold" check. |
| AWS WAF Bot Control (gating) | immobilienscout24.de | Returns a 401 with the "Ich bin kein Roboter" check. |
| Cloudflare in front (not challenging reads) | doctolib.de, vinted.de, willhaben.at, lieferando.de | No challenge on the read requests in the notes. |
| CloudFront and API Gateway (no bot management on reads) | flixbus.de | No bot management on the read requests. |
What the agent saw
On the eight gating sites, the browser agent was blocked in every run. bahn.de had 1 run, and the other seven had 9 each. Lieferando, which has Cloudflare in front, and OpenTable, which has no named vendor, were also blocked in every run.
Wield ran on the same eight sites, in the user's everyday browser:
- 9 of 9 on bahn.de, eventim.de, idealo.de, walmart.com and zillow.com.
- 5 of 9 on mobile.de.
- 0 of 9 on zalando.de.
- 0 of 2 on immobilienscout24.de.
Where a site's check stops a Wield run, the run ends with a site_challenge error. Wield does not work around the check. The failures on zalando.de and immobilienscout24.de are covered on the success rate page.
Sites with no vendor named
Five sites have protection described in the notes, but no vendor is named:
- amazon.com: a CAPTCHA for non-browser traffic at volume.
- ebay.de: answers servers with a 403.
- booking.com: a JavaScript challenge, with HTTP 202 for servers.
- otto.de: HTTP 400 for servers and for first loads without cookies.
- opentable.com: drops non-browser connections.
Ten sites have no protection noted: airbnb.com, arbeitsagentur.de, autoscout24.de, check24.de, chefkoch.de, ikea.com, jameda.de, mvg.de, stepstone.de and youtube.com. That means no protection is noted in our files. It does not mean none exists.
Method and caveats
- Count: 29 sites in the registry. 8 have a gating vendor named, 6 have a vendor present but not gating, 5 have unnamed protection and 10 have nothing noted.
- The benchmark uses one browser agent (Browser Use 0.13.14 with Claude Sonnet 5.5) in a fresh headless Chromium, as of 7 Nov 2026. It is preliminary.
- A site's protection is its own choice. Being on this list does not mean the site allows automated access. Check each site's terms notes in the registry.
FAQ
Which bot protection do German websites use?
Of the seven German sites in the registry with a named vendor, six use Akamai: bahn.de, zalando.de, idealo.de, eventim.de, mobile.de and kleinanzeigen.de, where Akamai does not gate the search page. The seventh, immobilienscout24.de, uses AWS WAF.
Is Akamai the most common?
Among named vendors in the registry, yes: 6 of the 9 named sites. The count only covers sites where the notes name a vendor.
Does Wield get past Akamai?
No. Wield does not solve or work around bot checks. When a site shows one, Wield stops with a site_challenge error and asks the user to solve it in their own tab.