How to Find Out What Technologies a Website Uses with BuiltWith

Updated

Enter a website's URL into the lookup field on the BuiltWith homepage and the tool returns a categorized list of the technologies it detects on that site — analytics, CMS, eCommerce, hosting, advertising, and more. The lookup itself is the fastest way to get a basic technology profile, and BuiltWith states you can sign up for a free account; more detailed data and export options sit behind the paid Plans page. This guide covers the lookup flow, how to read the results, and where the free tier typically stops.

What BuiltWith's lookup actually does

BuiltWith is a web technology profiler. Its homepage heading is "Find out what websites are Built With," and the site says it covers 127,626+ internet technologies, including analytics, advertising, hosting, CMS, and many more categories. For a single URL, the lookup matches the site's code and response signals against that technology database and reports what it finds.

Two things are worth knowing before you start:

  • Detection is signal-based, not a guarantee. A technology shows up because BuiltWith found evidence of it on the page or in the site's responses. A tool that's installed but not loading on the page you check may not appear.
  • The lookup is one of several entry points. BuiltWith also exposes Trends, Keyword Lists, eCommerce Product Lists, Top Sites, an API, browser extensions, and CRM integrations. For a one-off "what is this site built with" question, the lookup is the right tool.

Step-by-step: running a lookup

  1. Open the BuiltWith homepage. The lookup field is the primary action on the page.
  2. Enter the full website URL — for example, a domain like example.com. Use the site you actually want profiled, not a subpage, unless you specifically want that subpage's stack.
  3. Submit the lookup. BuiltWith processes the URL and returns a technology profile for that site.
  4. Read the results by category. Detected technologies are grouped by type (analytics, CMS, eCommerce, hosting, advertising, and others). Each entry links to more detail about that technology and how it's used on the site.
  5. Drill into individual technologies to see the specific product and its usage context on that site.

Expected result: a categorized list of technologies detected on the domain, with per-technology detail pages.

Reading the results

The value of a lookup is in the categories, because they tell you different things about a site:

Category What it tells you
Analytics / advertising Which measurement and ad platforms the site runs
CMS What the site is built and published on
eCommerce What storefront or commerce platform powers it
Hosting / infrastructure Where and how the site is served
Other (frameworks, CDNs, etc.) Supporting stack and delivery layer

BuiltWith's own examples show the scale of what it tracks: Shopify 6,722,390 live websites, Hubspot 514,911, Klaviyo 679,180, Zendesk 282,152, Salesforce 168,201, Shopify Plus 115,613, BigCommerce 35,441, Marketo 23,425, Demandware 5,968, and Magento Enterprise 1,975. Those counts come from BuiltWith's aggregate tracking, not from a single lookup — but they show the kind of technology labels a lookup can return.

Free lookup vs. paid plans

BuiltWith's homepage offers "Signup for Free," and the site links to a Plans page. The lookup gives you basic results; the analysis notes that paid plans offer more detailed data and export options. Treat the free tier as sufficient for a quick "what is this site running" check, and the paid tier as the route when you need volume, exports, or deeper attributes.

BuiltWith's broader data products hint at what sits beyond a single lookup:

  • eCommerce data: over 2,500 eCommerce technologies and 2 billion unique eCommerce products across 26 million+ eCommerce websites, with exportable attributes including spend, revenue, employee count, social media count, industry, location, and rank.
  • Trends: technology usage tracked weekly, with data going back to January 1985.
  • AI & engineering signals: verified AI adoption — AI agents, MCP servers, llms.txt, AI SDKs, inference APIs — plus APIs, MCP tools, and developer SDKs.

If your question is "what does this one site use," the free lookup answers it. If your question is "which companies use X, and can I export that list," that's the paid/data side.

Common snags

  • A technology you know is present doesn't appear. Detection depends on observable signals on the page you looked up. Check the specific page where the tool loads, or look at the domain root.
  • You need a list, not a single site. The lookup profiles one site at a time. For lists, BuiltWith points to Lead Generation, Market Analysis, and Sales Intelligence features, plus CRM integrations and browser extensions.
  • You want to automate it. BuiltWith offers an API and AI-ready APIs/MCP tools for programmatic access, rather than scraping the lookup page.
  • You're unsure what a detected technology means. Each result links to detail; BuiltWith also maintains a Knowledge Base and FAQ.

When to use the lookup vs. other BuiltWith tools

  • One site, quick answer: homepage lookup.
  • Many sites or a filterable list: Lead Generation / Market Analysis features, or the API.
  • Market-level view: Technology Trends.
  • Store/product-level data: eCommerce Data.
  • In-browser checking: Browser Extensions.

The lookup is the entry point; the rest of the platform is for turning single-site answers into lists, trends, and exports.