Cloaker: what it is, how it works and how to choose one
A cloaker decides, per click, which page each visitor sees. How it works, what it filters, what it costs, how to choose one and the real policy risks.
A cloaker is a tool that sits between an ad click and your landing page and decides, visit by visit, which page to serve. Automated visitors such as bots, platform review crawlers and ad spy tools get a neutral page, called the safe page. People who match your targeting get the offer page. Media buyers use cloakers on Meta, TikTok and Google traffic, and you should know up front that showing a reviewer something different from what users see breaks the ad policies of all three.
This guide covers the mechanics, the filters, the cost, how to pick a tool and where the limits are. Each topic links to a deeper article if you want more.
What is a cloaker?
Think of it as a router with rules. Your ad does not point straight at the landing page. It points at a link managed by the cloaker. When someone (or something) opens that link, the cloaker reads the request, applies your rules and answers with one of two pages.
The two pages have standard names in the industry. The safe page (also called white page) is neutral content that anyone can see. The offer page (also called money page) is what you want your buyers to see. Some tools add a third destination, a decoy, for visitors identified as ad spy tools.
A cloaker is not a tracker, although many trackers include basic filtering, and it is not a page builder. Its one job is the decision. For a shorter definition with a worked example, read what is a cloaker.
How does a cloaker work, step by step?
The whole sequence takes a fraction of a second and the visitor sees none of it.
- You create a cloaker in the dashboard and give it two destinations: the safe page and the offer page.
- The tool generates a link. You use that link as the destination URL of your ad.
- A visitor clicks. The request reaches the cloaker before any page loads.
- The cloaker reads what the request carries: user agent, headers, IP, country, language, device type.
- It runs your rules in order. The first rule that matches decides the outcome.
- It serves the safe page, the offer page or the decoy, and writes the decision to a log with the reason.
That last step matters more than it looks. A cloaker that cannot tell you why a visit was sent to the safe page leaves you guessing when a campaign underperforms.
What does a cloaker filter?
Different visitors leave different fingerprints. This is what a modern cloaker looks at, using Cloakfy as the reference.
| Visitor | How it is identified | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Bots and review crawlers | User agent and request signals | Safe page |
| Ad spy tools | Signatures of known spy services | Decoy page |
| Emulated phone in Chrome DevTools | Client Hints contradict the user agent | Safe page |
| VPN or proxy | IP classification | Safe page, if you turn the filter on |
| Wrong country, language or device | Geolocation and request headers | Safe page, if you turn the filter on |
| Person inside your targeting | Passes every rule | Offer page |
The emulation check deserves a note. When someone opens Chrome DevTools and switches to phone mode, the user agent says iPhone while the sec-ch-ua-platform header still says desktop. That contradiction gives the visitor away. The limit is real, though: it only works on Chrome and other Chromium browsers, because Firefox and Safari do not send Client Hints.
How much automated traffic is there? We can only speak for our own numbers. Of 177,649 visits processed by Cloakfy, 101,407 were bots. That is more than half, measured on Cloakfy's own traffic, and it will vary by niche, platform and country. Treat it as one data point and not as an industry average.
Safe page and offer page: what goes on each?
The safe page is what a reviewer, a bot or a filtered visitor lands on. It has to be a real, working page: it loads fast, it has actual content and it returns no errors. A broken safe page is worse than no cloaker, because a reviewer who hits an error has a reason to reject the ad on the spot. Cloakfy offers ready-made safe page templates or lets you point to your own URL. If an external safe page goes down, a failover serves a backup. You can also rotate several safe pages.
The offer page is your normal landing page. Nothing special is required of it technically. You can A/B test two versions through the same cloaker link.
A common beginner mistake is to treat the safe page as a throwaway. Spend an hour on it. Make it coherent with the ad, at least in theme, and check it on a phone.
How do you choose a cloaker?
Marketing pages all say the same things, so compare tools on what you can verify yourself during a trial.
| Criterion | What to check | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Detection | Which visitor types it identifies and how often the rules are updated | Filters age quickly |
| Transparency | Does every decision come with a logged reason? | Without it you cannot debug |
| Testing | Can you simulate a bot, a person and a spy tool before spending? | You catch mistakes for free |
| Dry run | Is there a mode that logs decisions without blocking anyone? | You measure false positives first |
| Own domain | Can the link run on your domain through a CNAME? | Shared domains carry other people's history |
| Metrics | Clicks by source, with UTM breakdown | You need to know which ad sent the buyer |
| Price | Currency, billing cycle, what happens when you hit the limit | Surprises here cost campaigns |
| Language | Is the interface in a language your team reads well? | Misread settings cause most errors |
Cloakfy has a Shadow Mode that runs every rule and records what it would have done, without blocking a single visitor, and a "Test cloaker" button that simulates profiles such as a Meta robot, a human, a spy tool, a VPN user and an emulated phone. The interface is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
For a side-by-side look at the options on the market, see best cloaker in 2026.
How much does a cloaker cost?
Prices vary a lot between tools, and many charge in dollars or euros. Cloakfy is a Brazilian product, so its prices are in Brazilian reais and billing is in BRL. These are the current plans.
| Plan | Monthly price | Annual price | Cloakers | Clicks per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | R$ 0 | not available | 1 | 1,000 |
| Starter | R$ 39 | R$ 390 | 3 | 20,000 |
| Pro | R$ 97 | R$ 970 | 15 | 150,000 |
| Unlimited | R$ 197 | R$ 1,970 | no limit | no limit |
The annual plans charge ten months and give you twelve. Paid plans come with a 7-day guarantee and you can cancel whenever you want. The free plan does not ask for a card. Which features belong to which plan is listed in the table on the plans page.
If you are deciding whether free is enough for you, free cloaker: what you get and where it stops goes through the math.
How do you set one up?
The short version, valid for most tools:
- Prepare both pages first. Safe page live and tested, offer page live and tested.
- Create the cloaker and paste both URLs, or pick a safe page template.
- Turn on the filters you need: country, language, device, VPN and proxy. Start narrow only if you are sure of your targeting.
- Connect your own domain with a CNAME record, if you have one.
- Run it in a dry-run mode or use the test button. Confirm that a simulated bot gets the safe page and a simulated person gets the offer.
- Put the link in the ad, with UTM parameters, and publish.
- Watch the logs on the first day. Look for real people being sent to the safe page.
Step 7 is where most money is recovered. A country filter set to the wrong market or a VPN filter that is too aggressive for your audience will quietly eat your conversions while the campaign looks healthy in the ad manager.
Platform details differ. The walkthrough for Meta is in cloaker for Facebook and Meta Ads.
What are the risks and limits?
This part is usually buried. Here it is in plain words.
It violates platform policy. Meta, TikTok and Google all prohibit showing their review systems content that differs from what users get. Meta and Google name cloaking explicitly in their rules on circumventing systems. If you use a cloaker for that purpose, you are breaking the rules you agreed to when you opened the ad account.
The consequences are concrete. Rejected ads, a suspended ad account or business manager, loss of the balance and loss of the account's history. Platforms can review an ad again after it has been approved, so an ad that runs today is not safe tomorrow.
No tool guarantees anything. A cloaker filters traffic and reduces exposure. It does not guarantee approval, it does not guarantee that the account survives and it is not undetectable. Cloakfy does not promise any of that, and you should distrust any vendor who does.
Detection has blind spots. Platforms change how they review. A human reviewer on an ordinary phone and a residential connection looks like a customer, because technically that is what they are. Emulation detection misses Firefox and Safari. Filters are probabilities.
Legal exposure is separate. If the offer itself is deceptive or illegal where you sell it, a cloaker does not change that. Consumer protection law applies to what the buyer sees.
There are uses that carry less risk: keeping ad spy tools from copying your funnel, keeping bot clicks out of your analytics, restricting an offer to the countries where you can actually deliver. In those cases the reviewer and the user can see the same page, and the filter only removes junk.
Guides by topic
- What is a cloaker? A direct answer with examples
- Best cloaker in 2026: how to compare the options
- Free cloaker: what you get and where it stops
- Cloaker for Facebook and Meta Ads: how it works
Want to see it working?
The quickest way to understand a cloaker is to watch the log fill up with your own traffic. Cloakfy's free plan gives you 1 cloaker and 1,000 clicks per month, with no card. Create an account or compare the limits on the plans page.
FAQ
What is a cloaker in simple terms?
It is a tool that receives the click from your ad and decides which page to show. Bots, review crawlers and spy tools get a neutral safe page, and people inside your targeting get the offer page.
Is using a cloaker legal?
The software itself is legal. Using it to show an ad reviewer a different page from the one users see violates the advertising policies of Meta, TikTok and Google, and the offer still has to comply with the law where you sell.
Can a cloaker stop my ad account from being suspended?
No. A cloaker reduces exposure to bots, crawlers and spy tools, but no tool guarantees approval or protects an account from suspension.
How much does a cloaker cost?
It depends on the tool. Cloakfy has a free plan with 1 cloaker and 1,000 clicks per month, and paid plans at R$ 39, R$ 97 and R$ 197 per month, billed in Brazilian reais.
What is the difference between a safe page and an offer page?
The safe page is neutral content shown to filtered visitors such as bots and crawlers. The offer page is your real landing page, shown to visitors who pass the rules.
Does a cloaker work with TikTok Ads and Google Ads?
Yes. A cloaker works with any traffic source that sends a click to a link, including Meta Ads, TikTok Ads and Google Ads. The policy risk is the same on all of them.