Wappalyzer vs BuiltWith
Wappalyzer and BuiltWith are the two most-referenced website-technology detectors, but they solve slightly different problems. Wappalyzer leads on breadth of fingerprints and per-page detection. BuiltWith leads on technographic data for sales and marketing teams. They overlap on the surface — both will tell you a site is built with Next.js and uses Google Analytics — but diverge sharply once you push on depth, workflow or price.
Context — which question are you really asking?
Which one you want depends almost entirely on why you're asking. If your question is 'what's running on this page in front of me right now?' you want a per-page tool that goes deep, and Wappalyzer's free extension is the reference for that. If your question is 'give me a CSV of every Shopify Plus store in the US that added Klaviyo in the last six months' you want a crawl-database tool with historical timelines and CRM integrations, and BuiltWith is the reference for that. The two tools are almost perpendicular: one excels at depth-on-demand, the other at breadth-over-time. Most developers bounce between them and don't realize they're paying the 'wrong' tool bill for their actual workflow.
Head-to-head table
Primary audience
Wappalyzer: Developers, researchers, security engineers, small SaaS teams with per-site curiosity.
BuiltWith: Sales, RevOps, marketing operations, competitive-intelligence teams building lead lists and dashboards.
Both serve both groups, but the product roadmap and pricing tell you which one is the star customer.
Free tier
Wappalyzer: Free browser extension with unlimited per-page lookups; no account required.
BuiltWith: Free single-domain lookup on the website, limited technology list, no history, aggressive upgrade prompts.
Bulk / API access
Wappalyzer: Paid API tiers priced per lookup; reasonable for mid-volume use.
BuiltWith: Paid API and CSV export; aggressive per-lookup and per-seat pricing aimed at sales teams.
Per-page detection depth
Wappalyzer: Deep: thousands of fingerprints, multi-signal (headers, cookies, DOM, JS globals, URL patterns, script-src).
BuiltWith: Medium at best: categorical labels, often without versions, some false duplications on tracker-heavy pages.
Version detection
Wappalyzer: Regex patterns on URLs and header values; usually major-only, frequently missing.
BuiltWith: Regex-based, coarse. Often no version at all.
Neither reads sourcemaps. Exact versions from `node_modules/<pkg>/package.json` are outside both tools' design.
WordPress plugin detail
Wappalyzer: A few dozen popular plugins have explicit fingerprint rules; unknown plugins aren't enumerated.
BuiltWith: Similar — some plugin coverage via rules, no generic enumeration by slug under `/wp-content/plugins/<slug>/`.
Historical timelines
Wappalyzer: Not offered.
BuiltWith: Strong. Per-domain 'added X on date Y, dropped Z on date W' timelines, going back years. Core BuiltWith differentiator.
Works on authenticated / internal sites
Wappalyzer: Yes, via the browser extension (same browser session).
BuiltWith: No. Crawl-based; cannot see anything behind login, on staging, or on internal networks.
Open-source / extensible
Wappalyzer: Originally open-source; main repo archived in August 2023. Community forks (enthec/webappanalyzer) continue.
BuiltWith: Fully proprietary, always has been.
CRM integration
Wappalyzer: Not offered.
BuiltWith: HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho native integrations on the Pro and Enterprise tiers.
Pricing floor
Wappalyzer: Free extension; paid API starts at low hundreds of dollars per month for modest volume.
BuiltWith: Free single-domain lookup; paid tiers start at a few hundred dollars per month and scale into four-figure enterprise plans.
Pick by scenario
If you are: A frontend engineer studying a competitor's site
Pick: Wappalyzer (or Sourcemap Explorer)
You want depth on one page. BuiltWith's free view is too shallow, and the paid features don't answer your question.
If you are: A sales development rep building a list of 2,000 'Next.js + Stripe' leads
Pick: BuiltWith
This is BuiltWith's core workflow. Wappalyzer's API can do it, but BuiltWith's CRM integrations and historical filters are purpose-built.
If you are: A security researcher studying a suspected fraud domain
Pick: Both, plus Netcraft
BuiltWith's historical tech timeline is useful evidence; Wappalyzer (or Sourcemap Explorer) tells you what's live now; Netcraft adds the hosting/SSL angle.
If you are: A RevOps manager enriching 50,000 leads in HubSpot
Pick: BuiltWith
Native CRM enrichment is what you're paying for. Wappalyzer can do it through the API but the integration surface is thinner.
If you are: A developer who wants exact library versions on every site they visit
Pick: Neither — use Sourcemap Explorer
Both tools are regex-only on versions. The only way to get exact semver at scale is to read sourcemaps, which is outside both tools' design.
Wappalyzer vs BuiltWith on pricing: where the money actually goes
The pricing comparison between Wappalyzer and BuiltWith confuses people because the two tools meter completely different things. Wappalyzer's paid plans are priced around lookups — you're buying API volume to enrich or audit a set of domains, and the free browser extension stays free for unlimited manual per-page checks. BuiltWith's paid plans are priced around the database — you're buying access to its historical index, list-building filters, and CRM enrichment, with seats and export limits layered on top.
That difference is why a developer who 'just wants to see the stack' should almost never pay either bill. The free Wappalyzer extension already answers the per-page question, and Sourcemap Explorer answers it with exact versions for free as well. You only reach for a paid tier when your question changes shape — from 'what is this one site running' to 'give me every site running X', which is a BuiltWith-class query, or 'enrich these 10,000 domains programmatically', which is a Wappalyzer-API-class query.
What neither Wappalyzer nor BuiltWith can tell you: exact versions
Both tools detect technologies with regex-style fingerprints over headers, cookies, markup and script URLs. That approach is great at answering 'is React here?' and weak at answering 'which React?'. Versions, when they appear at all, are major-only and frequently missing, because the precise number simply isn't present in the surface signals a fingerprint can read.
Sourcemap Explorer takes the other path: when a site ships sourcemaps, the original `node_modules/<pkg>/package.json` is reconstructable, so you read the exact semver instead of guessing it. That's the gap that matters for security triage (is this the patched version?), dependency audits, and competitive teardown — and it's structurally outside what Wappalyzer or BuiltWith were built to do.
Verdict
FAQ
Is Wappalyzer or BuiltWith better?
Neither is universally better — they're built for different jobs. Wappalyzer is better for deep per-page detection on the site in front of you (and its browser extension is free). BuiltWith is better for building lead lists across many domains and reading historical technology timelines. Pick by the question you're actually asking.
Is there a free alternative to Wappalyzer and BuiltWith?
Yes. Wappalyzer's own browser extension is free for per-page lookups, and Sourcemap Explorer is a free, local-first extension that goes further — it reads exposed sourcemaps to pull exact library versions and enumerate WordPress plugins, neither of which Wappalyzer or BuiltWith do.
Does Wappalyzer or BuiltWith show exact version numbers?
Rarely, and only major versions at best. Both rely on regex fingerprints, which usually can't see the precise semver. To get the exact version you need to read the site's sourcemaps, which is what Sourcemap Explorer does.
Can BuiltWith see sites behind a login or on staging?
No. BuiltWith is crawl-based, so it only sees publicly reachable pages. Wappalyzer's extension and Sourcemap Explorer run in your own browser session, so they work on authenticated dashboards, staging environments and internal sites.
Why is BuiltWith more expensive than Wappalyzer?
BuiltWith charges for access to its historical technographic database, list-building filters and CRM integrations — a sales-intelligence product. Wappalyzer charges for API lookup volume. If you only need per-page detection, both paid tiers are overkill.
Related
A third option for developers: Sourcemap Explorer.
Free, local-first browser extension that pulls exact library versions from exposed sourcemaps, enumerates WordPress plugins, and isolates third-party trackers from your stack output.