BuiltWith API

Query the BuiltWith API from your app, terminal, or AI agent.

Installation

# Homebrew (CLI only)
brew install zcaceres/tap/builtwith

# npm (library + CLI)
npm install builtwith-api

# MCP server (separate package)
npm install -g builtwith-mcp

Requires Node.js >= 18 (uses native fetch).

Breaking Changes in v3

• ESM-only - no more CommonJS/require() support
• Named export - import { createClient } from 'builtwith-api' (not default/require)
• Zod validation - invalid inputs throw ZodError instead of manual error messages
• Typed responses - methods return typed response objects (when using JSON format)

Features

Response Formats

• JSON support
• XML support
• CSV support
• TSV support (lists, relationships)
• TXT support (lists only)

APIs

Library Usage

import { createClient } from 'builtwith-api'

// Initialize with your API key
const builtwith = createClient(process.env.BUILTWITH_API_KEY, {
  responseFormat: 'json' // 'json' 'xml' 'csv' 'tsv' 'txt' (txt only for lists API)
})

const url = 'facebook.com'

// Free lookup - quick summary
await builtwith.free(url)

// Full domain analysis
await builtwith.domain(url, {
  // This will hide technology description, link, tag and category fields
  hideAll: false,
  // This will hide technology description and link fields (but keep tag and categories)
  hideDescriptionAndLinks: false,
  // This will only return technologies we consider to be live
  onlyLiveTechnologies: true,
  // No meta data (like address, names etc..) will be returned. Improves performance.
  noMetaData: true,
  // No attributes data will be returned
  noAttributeData: true,
  // No personally identifiable information will be returned
  noPII: true,
  // Filter by first detected date range (e.g. '2020-01-01-2024-12-31')
  firstDetectedRange: undefined,
  // Filter by last detected date range
  lastDetectedRange: undefined
})

// List sites using a technology
const technology = 'Shopify'
// The name of a technology. Spaces automatically replaced with dashes (-).
await builtwith.lists(technology, {
  // Brings back meta data with the results, which includes names, titles, social links, addresses, emails, telephone numbers, traffic ranks etc.
  includeMetaData: true,
  // Gets the next page of results - use the exact value from NextOffset in response. If the value of NextOffset is END there are no more results.
  offset: 'oQEwEnH2FJuIzeXOEk2T',
  // Gets live sites using the technology since a certain time, accepts dates and queries i.e. 30 Days Ago or Last January for example.
  since: '2016-01-20'
})

// Find related domains
await builtwith.relationships(url)

// Multi-domain keyword lookup (up to 16 domains)
const urls = ['hotelscombined.com', 'builtwith.com']
await builtwith.keywords(urls)

// Technology trends over time
await builtwith.trends(technology, {
  // Totals will be the closest to this date - providing the ability to get historical totals
  date: '2016-01-20'
})

// Find a company's website
const companyName = 'Shell'
await builtwith.companyToUrl(companyName, {
  // Bring back domains in order of priority - the first result is generally the one we think the website is
  amount: 1,
  // Set the priority extension - if you know the country of the company supply the most likely TLD. i.e. for United Kingdom use 'uk'
  tld: 'com'
})

// Live domain detection
await builtwith.domainLive(url)

// Trust & fraud detection
await builtwith.trust(url, {
  // If the words specified here are in the HTML of the website the result will have Stopwords set to true for LIVE lookups.
  words: 'medicine,masks',
  // Performs a live lookup of the website in question. This slows down the response. A result with a status of 'needLive' requires the LIVE option to determine if the website is suspect or not.
  live: false
})

// Get domains related to IPs and site attributes. Use 'IP-1.2.3.4' format for IP lookups.
await builtwith.tags(url)

// Get technology recommendations for a domain
await builtwith.recommendations(url)

// Get live and historical redirect data for a domain
await builtwith.redirects(url)

// Search for e-commerce sites selling specific products
await builtwith.product('shoes')

CLI

The CLI wraps all 13 API methods. No extra dependencies beyond the package itself.

builtwith <command> <primary-arg> [--flag value ...]

Authentication

Pass your API key via --api-key or the BUILTWITH_API_KEY environment variable:

# Flag
builtwith free example.com --api-key YOUR_KEY

# Environment variable
export BUILTWITH_API_KEY=YOUR_KEY
builtwith free example.com

Examples

builtwith free example.com
builtwith free example.com --table
builtwith domain example.com --hideAll --onlyLiveTechnologies
builtwith domain "example.com,other.com"
builtwith lists Shopify --since 2024-01-01
builtwith companyToUrl "Acme Corp" --amount 5 --tld com
builtwith trust example.com --words "shop,buy" --live
builtwith trends React --date 2024-06-01

Use --help for full usage or builtwith <command> --help for command-specific options:

builtwith --help
builtwith domain --help
builtwith --version

MCP Server

The MCP server is available as a separate package: builtwith-mcp. It exposes all 13 API methods as tools for LLM clients (Claude Desktop, Cursor, etc.).

Claude Desktop Configuration

Add to your Claude Desktop config (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "builtwith": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "builtwith-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "BUILTWITH_API_KEY": "YOUR_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or passing the key directly:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "builtwith": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "builtwith-mcp", "--api-key", "YOUR_KEY"]
    }
  }
}

Tools

All tools are prefixed with builtwith_:

Testing with MCP Inspector

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector -- npx -y builtwith-mcp --api-key YOUR_KEY

Learn More

Check out the full API docs at api.builtwith.com

For LLM-friendly API documentation, see api.builtwith.com/llms.txt