# TIME serves bots a different website, and User-Agent is now a billing identity

DevFeed: [TIME serves bots a different website, and User-Agent is now a billing identity](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/time-serves-bots-a-different-website-and-user-agent-is-now-a-billing-identity-16068.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://workos.com/blog/user-agent-is-now-a-billing-identity>)

Author: WorkOS

Published: 2026-08-06T01:46:28Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [WorkOS Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/workos-blog.md>)

Topics: [AI Bots](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai-bots.md>), [Bot](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/bot.md>), [Crawler](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/crawler.md>), [SIEM, Security, Observability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/siem-security-observability.md>)

Tags: [ads](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ads.md>), [billing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/billing.md>), [bots](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/bots.md>), [curl](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/curl.md>), [logs](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/logs.md>), [measurement](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/measurement.md>), [openai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/openai.md>), [routing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/routing.md>)

## AI overview

The article examines how TIME serves different content to crawlers based on User-Agent headers and records bot reads as billable ad impressions. It argues that because clients can freely change the header, crawler identity is an unreliable basis for billing and measurement.

## Source excerpt

TIME forks its content per crawler and logs each bot read as a billable ad impression. The routing key for that whole ledger is a header any client can type.