BuiltWith vs Wappalyzer vs PoweredBy: Free Tech Profilers Compared

The short verdict: PoweredBy for free unlimited site reports with history, Wappalyzer for checking sites while you browse, and BuiltWith when you need the deepest data or lead lists and can pay for them.

All three read the same public fingerprints, so the real differences are the free limits, the history and the price of going deeper. Pricing below was verified from all three vendors' pages this July.

Disclosure before anything else: PoweredBy is built by the Keywords Everywhere team, whose network this site belongs to. The comparison stays honest anyway, because the three tools barely compete: they are built for different users.

Three tools, three different customers

BuiltWith: the deepest data, priced for sales teams

BuiltWith has tracked web technology since 2007 and covers hundreds of millions of domains with more than 123,000 tracked technologies. Nothing else matches that archive.

The free lookup handles single domains without an account, and that covers most curiosity. The paid plans are a different product: Basic at $295 a month, Pro at $495 and Team at $995 buy lead lists, technology market share and CRM integrations.

If the question is "give me every Shopify Plus store in Germany", BuiltWith is the answer and the price makes sense. For checking one competitor, keep your card in your pocket.

Wappalyzer: the one that lives in your browser

Wappalyzer's free extension is the most convenient tech checker ever made: one toolbar click on any page you are already reading.

The website's lookup tool allows roughly 50 free checks and email verifications a month with 5 site alerts. Paid starts at $250 a month ($207.50 on annual billing) for 5,000 lookups, again aimed at lead generation.

Its weakness is depth: the extension sees what loads in your session, so technologies on other pages or loaded conditionally can slip past. It is a thermometer, not an MRI.

PoweredBy: unlimited free reports with history

PoweredBy is the newest of the three, built by the Keywords Everywhere team, and its pitch is simple: the full per-site report, free, uncapped, no account.

Reports group detections into 54+ categories and mark when each technology first appeared, with history back to April 2018. That free history is the feature the other two mostly charge for.

What it does not do: no browser extension, no lead lists, no API products. If your job needs those, it is not your tool, and it does not pretend otherwise.

Judge it directly by opening a live report. It takes ten seconds and settles more than any review.

Choose BuiltWith if...

• You sell software and want lists of sites running a specific technology, because that is exactly what its paid tiers produce.
• You need technology history deeper than 2018 for research or due diligence.
• Market-share data across technologies matters to your work.

Choose Wappalyzer if...

• You want tech answers while browsing, without visiting another site.
• A rough 50 web lookups a month covers your needs.
• You like having alerts on a handful of watched sites.

Choose PoweredBy if...

• You check competitors one domain at a time and want it free and uncapped.
• First-seen dates and change history matter, since technology changes are strategy changes.
• You refuse to create an account just to read a report.

Or use two of them, which is what we actually do

Detection is pattern matching, and no signature library is complete. The professional habit is one deep report plus one spot check.

Run the domain through PoweredBy or BuiltWith for the full picture, then confirm the load-bearing claims in your browser with Wappalyzer or the page source. Two agreeing sources end most arguments.

How we compared them

Free limits and prices were pulled from all three vendors' public pages in July 2026 and tested against the same domains. PoweredBy belongs to this site's network, which is disclosed above and changes none of the numbers.