What would you suggest as an alternative? Block the bots yourself ?

Yes. Any number of methods work. From requiring a cookie to requiring CSS to be loaded to a PoW to a JavaScript redirect. Most scraper bots are really dumb. If you do it cookie based, you can also put a poison link on every page that invalidates their cookie and starts returning poison on every page after that, so they're damned if they do and damned if they don't.

	▲	Demiurge an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I have tried cookie based sessions and I have tried multiple things. I have been battling DDOS and script kiddies longer than CF has been a thing. You’re wrong in that you think I could continue to maintain the site without CF in front of it, I would just shut it down. It’s not a profitable forum, it’s just a hobby.