Help Us Help More People
We aggregate AA meeting data to help people in recovery find support. If we're blocked by your website, here's how to whitelist us.
What We Do
sobriety.tools is a free, open-source recovery support platform that helps people find AA, NA, CMA, and other 12-step meetings.
We automatically collect meeting data from 400+ AA service entities using the standardized TSML Meeting Guide API format. This data helps people in crisis find meetings near them, especially:
- People new to recovery looking for their first meeting
- Travelers needing meetings in unfamiliar cities
- People in crisis needing immediate support
- Those seeking specific meeting types (LGBTQ, young people, newcomers)
We sync meeting data twice daily to keep information fresh and accurate. We NEVER sell data, show ads, or track users. This is a labor of love by people in recovery, for people in recovery.
The Problem
Some AA websites use aggressive bot protection (Cloudflare, Imperva, etc.) that blocks ALL cloud provider IPs, including:
- Cloudflare Workers
- Vercel Edge Functions
- AWS Lambda
- Google Cloud Functions
This prevents us from accessing your meeting data, which means people searching for meetings in your area won't find them on sobriety.tools.
Currently blocked sites: San Francisco/Marin, Portland, East Bay, SE Pennsylvania, Baltimore, Atlanta, and 15+ others.
How to Whitelist Us
1. Whitelist Our User Agents
2. Whitelist Our IP Ranges
We use cloud providers for automated harvesting. Whitelist these CIDR ranges:
If You Use Cloudflare
- Log in to Cloudflare dashboard
- Go to Security → WAF → Tools
- Add a User Agent Block exception for:(http.user_agent contains "sobriety-tools")
- Set action to Skip (allows through WAF)
Our API
We consume standard TSML (12 Step Meeting List) JSON feeds from WordPress sites:
We follow the Meeting Guide API specification and respect all standard conventions.
Harvesting Schedule:
- Frequency: Every hour (24x daily)
- Method: HTTP GET with standard headers
- Data retention: Upsert only (never delete meetings)
- Rate limiting: 1 request per site per harvest cycle
Privacy & Security:
- We NEVER collect personally identifiable information
- No last names, phone numbers, or email addresses
- All data is public meeting information only
- Privacy-first architecture with encrypted data at rest
Request API Access
Need programmatic access to our meeting database? Request a free API key with higher rate limits.
Rate Limits:
Questions or Need Help?
We're happy to work with you to ensure smooth data access while respecting your security requirements.