eBay Banned AI Shopping Bots
Legal Barrier to Automatic Shopping Agents
E-commerce platform eBay, with an update to its user agreement, imposed restrictions on third-party automation tools and AI-powered shopping bots. The company is specifically targeting “buy for me” agents that can place orders without human intervention and LLM-based bots.
This technology, described in the industry as “agentic commerce,” autonomously performs product search, comparison, and purchase transactions on behalf of users. eBay’s updated policy explicitly prohibits unauthorized use of end-to-end flows without human oversight. The new terms will take effect on February 20, 2026.
Shift from the Robots.txt File to the User Agreement
eBay had previously placed technical barriers through the robots.txt file on its website against bots from companies such as Perplexity, Anthropic, and Amazon. However, this file was only advisory in nature and had limited legal enforceability. Adding the ban directly to the user agreement gives the company the right to take legal action against those who violate the rule.
These restrictions on the platform cover the following headings:
- Autonomous order flows without human oversight.
- Unauthorized data scraping tools.
- External LLM-based shopping assistants.
The company stated that this ban does not cover collaborations carried out with prior explicit permission from eBay. This indicates that official integrations with OpenAI or similar AI companies may be made in the future. In addition, eBay continues to test internal AI solutions in its own search and shopping infrastructure.