by
phalkmin
0 (0 reviews)
ParseLess
Serve AI the good version of your content, see which bots really read it, and cap what they cost you. Markdown for crawlers and agents — 95%+ less ban …
ParseLess ranks #19,258 among WordPress.org plugins with 60+ active installations, and was last updated Oct 13, 2026. Data from WordPress.org, refreshed twice daily — see methodology.
Tested up to WP 7.0.8 (Current: 7.1.4)
v1.0.0
Current Version v1.0.0
Updated 3 weeks ago
Last Update on 13 Oct, 2026
Refreshed 1 week ago
Last Refreshed on
Top 25% by installs
Downloads -43.6% this week
Actively maintained
Rank
#19,258
—
No change
Active Installs
60+
-14.3%
KW Avg Position
97.7
4.4 worse
Downloads
1.9K
+1 today
Support Resolved
0%
—
No change
Rating
0%
Review 0 out of 5
0
(0 reviews)
Next Milestone 70
60+
70+
2,796
Ranks to Climb
-
Growth Needed
8,000,000
Active Installs
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- Version
- 1.0.0
- Last Updated
- Oct 13, 2026
- Requires WP
- 6.8+
- Tested Up To
- 7.0.8
- PHP Version
- 8.2 or higher
- Author
- phalkmin
Support & Rating
- Rating
- ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 0
- Reviews
- 0
- Support Threads
- 0
- Resolved
- 0%
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Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about ParseLess
Append ?format=md to any post URL, e.g. https://example.com/my-post/?format=md. The same URL works from curl, wget, or any CLI tool you want to pipe into.
No. Markdown is only served when the request matches a known AI bot User-Agent or explicitly includes ?format=md. Browsers, Google's regular search crawler, and every other visitor receive your normal WordPress HTML. The Markdown endpoint also sends X-Robots-Tag: noindex so it never competes with your HTML pages in traditional search.
GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-User, Claude-SearchBot, anthropic-ai, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, CCBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, Bytespider, Meta-ExternalAgent, Meta-ExternalFetcher, cohere-ai, Amazonbot, DuckAssistBot, MistralAI-User. You can extend, replace, or restrict this list in the settings or via the md4ai_bot_list filter. The Analytics tab also surfaces bot-like User-Agents that didn't match, with a one-click "add to list".
Not by default — the opposite. ParseLess makes your content easier for AI bots to ingest, so you keep the AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) benefit of being cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and AI Overviews. It just delivers that content in a format that's cheap for both you and them. If you want to push back on specific crawlers, you can: the Blocked Bots list refuses them with a 403, the rate limit throttles any bot that exceeds a per-minute cap with a 429, and robots.txt can carry Content Signals, AI bot rules and an RSL licence. All of that is off until you turn it on.
Enable logging and "Log All AI Crawler Traffic" under Tools → ParseLess, wait a few days, and look at the "Known bots — reachability" table on the Analytics tab. A crawler that is on your list but never seen — or only ever seen blocked or throttled — is being stopped before it reaches WordPress. Pages served from a full-page cache or CDN never reach PHP, so those visits are invisible to any plugin.
Yes. Anyone can send a request claiming to be GPTBot, and ParseLess currently trusts that label, so bot counts in Analytics can be inflated and a block or rate limit applies to whoever claims the name. Verifying crawlers against the IP ranges their operators publish is planned for a 1.x release.
It depends on your theme and what's hitting you. A real measurement on a content-rich page: response size dropped from 79 KB to 4 KB (95% smaller, 20x reduction) and TTFB from 251 ms to 115 ms. Database queries typically drop ~60–80% per request — the WordPress bootstrap still runs; only the theme/widget/builder rendering is skipped. Page-builder sites (Elementor, Divi) see the largest savings because their HTML payloads are the heaviest. The conversion is cached, so repeated bot hits on the same post are nearly free.
ParseLess runs the_content filter before conversion, so anything those builders render into the post content gets captured and converted. Layout-only wrappers and design scaffolding are stripped out, leaving the actual text, headings, lists, tables, images, and links.
Optionally, yes. Enable Include frontmatter in the settings to prepend a YAML block with title, URL, author, date, categories, tags, and excerpt.