--- title: "Free CMS Detector" description: "Find out what any website is built with. Detects WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Wix, Squarespace, Next.js, Ghost and more — with the evidence behind every match." url: "https://skribra.com/tools/cms-detector" type: "tool" --- # Free CMS Detector Find out what any website is built with. Detects WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Wix, Squarespace, Next.js, Ghost and more — with the evidence behind every match. Free, no sign-up. The tool itself runs on the HTML page — this representation carries everything around it. ## How the CMS Checker Finds What a Website Is Built With Every platform leaves fingerprints in the pages it serves: a generator meta tag, a platform-specific response header, a CDN hostname, a predictable asset path. Enter a domain and this checker fetches the site's homepage, reads its HTML and HTTP response headers, and matches them against signatures for 17 platforms. It shows the evidence behind every match rather than just asserting an answer, so you can judge it yourself. What it looks for. Strong signals are ones a site rarely produces by accident: a generator meta tag naming WordPress, Squarespace, Webflow, Ghost, Drupal, Joomla, Astro or Framer; platform response headers such as Shopify's x-shopify-stage, Wix's X-Wix headers or Drupal's X-Generator; platform asset hosts such as cdn.shopify.com, static.parastorage.com (Wix), static1.squarespace.com, website-files.com (Webflow) and the BigCommerce CDN; a reference to the WordPress REST API; and framework build output such as /_next/static/ for Next.js, __NUXT__ for Nuxt or ___gatsby for Gatsby. Weak signals are suggestive but easy to copy: wp-content and wp-includes asset paths, Webflow page attributes, Astro island markers, WooCommerce body classes, Shopify theme globals and the Framer asset host. How confidence is scored. Each strong signal is worth 2 points and each weak one 1 point. Three or more points is high confidence, exactly 2 is medium, and 1 is low, so a single strong signal on its own reads as medium. The platform with the most points becomes the main result; every other platform with evidence is listed under Other signals, because sites genuinely run on more than one layer, such as WooCommerce on WordPress or a storefront on a JavaScript framework. If the homepage has no strong signal at all, the checker also fetches /blog (or /news when there is no blog) and marks anything it finds there as coming from that page, since a blog is often where the CMS shows itself. Worked example. Say a store's homepage carries a WordPress generator tag (2 points) and loads files from /wp-content/ and /wp-includes/ (1 point each), plus scripts from /plugins/woocommerce/ (2 points). The result is WordPress at high confidence with 4 points, and WooCommerce listed underneath at medium confidence with 2. The Why we think so list under each card names the exact signals, and the small note under Other signals tells you whether you are seeing a fresh fetch or a cached result. Limits worth knowing. The checker reads the HTML the server sends and does not run JavaScript, so anything a page injects in the browser is invisible to it (the same gap that [JavaScript SEO](https://skribra.com/glossary/javascript-seo) deals with). It always checks the site's homepage, not the specific page you paste. A headless setup, where a CMS such as Contentful or Sanity feeds a framework, shows up as the framework, because the CMS never touches the HTML. A third-party script can add a misleading secondary match: a site using HubSpot only for marketing forms still loads HubSpot's script host and may list HubSpot CMS. Platforms outside the 17, such as Magento, show as Not identified. Results are cached for 7 days, so a site that migrated this week can still show its old platform. Checking by hand. Open the page source (Ctrl+U, or Cmd+Option+U on a Mac) and search for "generator" first, then for telltale paths such as wp-content, cdn.shopify.com or _next/static. For headers, open your browser's developer tools, reload with the Network tab open, select the first document request and read its response headers. These are the same places this tool looks, and none of them is proof on its own: generator tags can be removed, asset paths rewritten and headers stripped by a proxy such as Cloudflare. Knowing the platform is step one; publishing more and better content than the competitor running it is step two. Skribra integrates directly with WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Notion and custom webhooks, so [published articles land wherever your site already lives](https://skribra.com/features/publishing). See the [full list of integrations](https://skribra.com/integrations), or the [WordPress setup guide](https://skribra.com/docs/integrations/wordpress) if the site you just checked runs on WordPress. ## Who Benefits From a CMS Detector? Anyone who needs to know what a website runs on before they act. - **Agency Teams** — Scope a prospect's project accurately before quoting on it. - **Web Developers** — Identify a platform before taking over an unfamiliar codebase. - **SEO Specialists** — Know which platform's quirks and plugins you are working around. - **Competitive Analysts** — See which platforms competitors in your market have chosen. - **Sales Teams** — Qualify leads by whether their stack fits what you integrate with. - **Freelancers** — Confirm a prospective client's site matches your expertise. - **Founders** — Research what platforms sites you admire were actually built on. - **Migration Planners** — Document the current stack before planning a replatform. ## FAQ ### How do I find out what CMS a website uses? Enter the site's domain above and press Detect platform. The checker reads the homepage's HTML and response headers, names the platform it matched, rates its confidence, and lists the exact signals it found. To check by hand, view the page source and search for "generator", wp-content or cdn.shopify.com, then read the response headers in your browser's developer tools. ### Which platforms can this CMS checker detect? Seventeen: content management systems (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Ghost, HubSpot CMS and Notion-published sites), site builders (Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, Framer), ecommerce platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce) and JavaScript frameworks (Next.js, Nuxt, Astro, Gatsby). Platforms outside that list show as Not identified. ### How does the detection work? It fetches the page and matches its HTML and response headers against known fingerprints. Strong signals, such as a generator meta tag, a platform response header or a platform CDN hostname, count 2 points; weak signals, such as an asset path or class name, count 1, because those are easy to copy by accident. The platform with the most points is the main result. ### What do high, medium and low confidence mean? High means 3 or more points of evidence, for example two strong signals or one strong and one weak. Medium means exactly 2 points, usually one strong signal. Low means a single weak signal, such as an asset path that could have been copied. Read the evidence list under the result to decide how far to trust it. ### Why does it say the platform is not identified? Usually because the site is a custom build, a static site that leaves no trace, a platform outside the 17 the checker knows, or a page that only reveals its stack through JavaScript, which the checker does not run. Proxies such as Cloudflare can also strip identifying headers. None of these is a problem with the site. ### Can a website hide its CMS? Yes. A site can remove its generator tag, rewrite or proxy its asset paths and strip platform headers, and some do so deliberately. Fingerprints prove what is present, not what is absent, so a missing or low-confidence match means little evidence was found rather than that a platform is ruled out. ### Does it detect plugins, themes or hosting? No. It identifies the platform and closely related layers, such as WooCommerce on top of WordPress, but it does not list installed plugins, theme names, hosting providers or analytics tools. ### Is the CMS checker free? Yes, with no sign-up. There is a fair-use limit per visitor so the tool stays fast for everyone, and results are cached for 7 days, so re-checking the same domain is instant but will not reflect a migration made within the last week. ## Related tools - [Technical SEO Audit](https://skribra.com/tools/technical-seo-audit): Run 30 on-page SEO checks against any domain in about a second. - [Sitemap Validator](https://skribra.com/tools/sitemap-validator): Validate your XML sitemap, count URLs and follow nested sitemap indexes. - [Open Graph Preview](https://skribra.com/tools/open-graph-preview): Preview how your pages look when shared on social platforms. - [SERP Preview](https://skribra.com/tools/serp-preview): See how your title and description will appear in Google results. ## Machine-readable index - HTML version of this page: https://skribra.com/tools/cms-detector - Site index for agents: https://skribra.com/llms.txt - Sitemap: https://skribra.com/sitemap.xml - Public REST API: https://skribra.com/api/v1 - OpenAPI specification: https://skribra.com/openapi.json