# iocaine

9 Hacker News commenters recommended iocaine and 5 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Self-hosted reverse proxy middleware that feeds AI scrapers junk, protecting whole servers from crawler load. Critics say it wastes bandwidth and resources and can block real visitors.

## Why people recommend it

- Reduces AI scraper load on servers (2 comments): "It has indeed been very useful to get the AI scraper load on a server I maintain down to a reasonable level" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47532599)) "the bots have mostly stopped crawling my HTML" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46265954))
- Feeds scrapers junk through a tarpit (2 comments): "Best way fight back is to create a tarpit that will feed them garbage" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47058920)) "I use iocaine[0] to generate a tarpit." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46609758))
- Protects the whole server, not one site (2 comments): "My personal preference is using iocaine for this purpose though, in order to protect the entire server as opposed to a single site." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562780)) "can be self-hosted and put in as a "middleware" in your reverse proxy with a few lines of config" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47534120))

## What people warn about

- Wastes bandwidth and server resources (2 comments): "it won't work, and it will just consume resources for whoever runs it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47023874)) "Seems like a good way to waste tons of your bandwidth." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46359262))
- Aggressively blocks or disrupts visitors (2 comments): "This site blocked me right away, seems quite agressive" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46357975)) "It flashes some text briefly then gives me an 418 TEAPOT response." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46610137))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Anubis](https://hackerapproved.com/p/anubis.md): 164 recommend
- [Miasma](https://hackerapproved.com/p/miasma.md): 8 recommend
- [Poison Fountain](https://hackerapproved.com/p/poison-fountain.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "iocaine", https://hackerapproved.com/p/iocaine/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).