Why do I receive an error 403 for a public site and how to fix it?

You might notice that Iframely sometimes returns an error 403: "Iframely could not fetch the given URL. The page appears to be private, requiring a login, or does not allow robots".

This may happen for sites that were previously available on Iframely when a publisher updates their access rules to block access from third-party services, including ours. It typically means the publisher's server is denying access to Iframely.

This can be either a result of technical misconfiguration on the publisher's end or a change in their copyright policy. In both cases, if you do business with the publisher, you would need to reach out to them and request changes to make their website available for your application on Iframely.

Iframely operates as a technical intermediary. We do not license or redistribute content - it is your responsibility. We only return what is made available to us by the publisher. What we can do is provide the tools and documentation that enable publishers to allow access if they choose to.

1. Fixing a technical misconfiguration

If you have a connection with the publisher and they are open to allowing access, you can share this documentation on how to allow the Iframely robot on their network. It often involves allowing our User-Agent string and IPv4/IPv6 address ranges or a reverse DNS.

Depending on the error, in some cases, we may also be able to assist the publisher directly from our end, to improve the handshake or compatibility.

Iframely is listed with and recognized by major content delivery platforms such as Cloudflare, CloudFront WAF, DataDome and others. Publishers using these services may simply need to toggle access in their control panels.

2. Legal and copyright access

Beyond the technical layer, there is a legal and policy layer that we do not control.

Iframely is only a technical intermediary and as noted in our Terms, any publisher may become unavailable at any time. We can only provide as much information as the publisher is willing to extend to us.

When access is restricted intentionally for Iframely network — whether via WAF tools, bot blacklists, or manual filtering — we have no choice but to respect that decision.

However, publishers have full control over how their content is distributed. Even though they may choose to restrict Iframely access globally, we still give them an option to allow our individual customers selectively, by app name.

Please configure the app name in your settings. You may also change the User-Agent extension for that purpose. When ready, please forward publisher our allowlisting documentation and your app name. IP addresses and rDNS remain the same, whereas your User-Agent string will be unique to your account with us.