Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive cloud services platform offering compute power, database storage, content delivery and other functionality.
What detecting Amazon Web Services tells you about a site
AWS is infrastructure, so detecting it is about where the bytes come from, not the page markup. The signals are hostnames and headers: assets served from *.cloudfront.net or an S3 bucket URL, an x-amz-* response header, a CloudFront Via/X-Cache line, or an ELB load-balancer cookie like AWSALB. Finding AWS tells you almost nothing about the application framework but a lot about operations — the team chose the dominant cloud, likely uses managed services for storage and compute, and has the flexibility (and bill) that comes with it. It is the default, so it is a weak signal of team identity but a strong one of cloud-native deployment.
The detail that matters for Amazon Web Services
AWS is broad enough that the specific marker matters: a raw s3.amazonaws.com asset URL hints at a simpler or older setup, whereas everything behind cloudfront.net with cache headers suggests a deliberately CDN-fronted architecture.
Amazon Web Services in a real-world stack
When you find Amazon Web Services, it rarely travels alone. Frequently paired with CloudFront for delivery, an ALB in front of containers or Lambda, and very often a second analytics or monitoring SaaS layered on top.
About
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive cloud services platform offering compute power, database storage, content delivery and other functionality.
Categories: PaaS
Quick facts
Detection methodology for PaaS
Platform-as-a-Service offerings show up as response headers and deployment domains. Heroku's `Server: Cowboy` plus `*.herokuapp.com`; Render's `*.onrender.com`; Fly.io's `*.fly.dev`. We pair the host detection with framework signals so you can tell what's running on the platform — a Heroku dyno serving Rails looks very different from a Heroku dyno serving Node, even though both fit the same hosting fingerprint.
How we detect Amazon Web Services
Sourcemap Explorer carries 9 fingerprint signals for Amazon Web Services, spread across 2 channels — response header and script src url. The exact patterns are listed below, and you can replay each one in Chrome DevTools to confirm a match by hand.
Each signal alone is rarely conclusive — Sourcemap Explorer cross-references all of them and weights by confidence. You can reproduce any of these checks yourself in Chrome DevTools.
Server-side fingerprint: the response header reveals the technology behind the page. Visible in DevTools → Network → response headers.
x-amz-delete-marker:
x-amz-err-code:
x-amz-err-message:
x-amz-id-2:
x-amz-req-time-micros:
x-amz-request-id:
x-amz-rid:
x-amz-version-id:
Script URL pattern. Typically a CDN host or chunk path that ships with the technology.
\.amazonaws\.com
FAQ
How do I check if a website is using Amazon Web Services?
Open the page in Chrome, click the Sourcemap Explorer toolbar icon, and read the Stack tab. Amazon Web Services's specific fingerprints here are response header and script src url, and the popup flags Amazon Web Services whenever any combination of them is found. The same checks can be reproduced manually in DevTools — see the "How we detect" section above.
What Amazon Web Services version can Sourcemap Explorer detect?
Amazon Web Services ships as a hosted paas rather than a bundled npm package, so version-specific detection isn't always possible. Where the platform leaks a version in response headers (`X-Powered-By`, `Server`, generator meta tags) we surface it; otherwise we report presence only.
Is Amazon Web Services a SaaS or self-hosted?
Amazon Web Services is offered as a hosted SaaS product. Detection runs against the JavaScript SDK or asset-URL fingerprints the platform ships into pages.
Where can I read more about Amazon Web Services?
Official site: https://aws.amazon.com/. For Sourcemap Explorer's detection guide, see the deep-dive link below or the related guides in the cross-link section.
Keep reading on Sourcemap Explorer
Alternative tools
Detected by Sourcemap Explorer
Open the popup on any page running Amazon Web Servicesand you'll see the exact version pulled from the bundled package.json when sourcemaps are exposed.