Wappalyzer identifies the technologies behind a website and sells the result as lookups, lead lists and alerts. It is built for checking a website on demand, from a browser extension or an API call, with a lookup that returns company and contact details beside the technologies.
This guide is for the team that wants technology detection as a dataset to build on: a product team adding technology filters or change alerts, or an analyst who needs every change dated. It compares what Wappalyzer and Fokals publish about scope, method, delivery and licence, lists other sources of technographic data, and shows how a feed of changes becomes a product feature.
What Wappalyzer offers
Wappalyzer's home page says it helps sales and go-to-market teams build technographic prospect lists, enrich CRM records and monitor competitor installs. Its products are lead lists, technology lookup, email verification, website alerts and apps. The about page says the data is available through its website, APIs, browser extension and bulk data products.
The technology directory explains the method. Wappalyzer looks for public signals on websites, including HTML code, scripts, headers and cookies. The same page counts more than 8,000 web technologies across more than 100 categories.
The API page lists four APIs: technology lookup, lead lists, subdomain finder and email verification. Beside technologies, a lookup can return company details, verified email addresses, phone numbers, social media profiles, keywords and metadata. The lookup documentation says a request returns cached results by default, can scan a website live, can follow internal links to index several pages, and can return historic results grouped by month, up to twelve months in one request.
The apps page lists browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari, CRM integrations for Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive, and automation through Zapier and Pabbly. The pricing page publishes Pro, Business and Enterprise plans and a free account. The terms of service say the data is licensed and may not be resold, published or embedded in a customer-facing product without Wappalyzer's written permission, and that enterprise or custom written terms may grant broader rights.
What Wappalyzer is built for
- A website you name. A lookup takes a URL, can scan it live and can follow internal links to index several pages.
- A catalogue of web technologies. Wappalyzer's directory counts more than 8,000 web technologies.
- Versions. Wappalyzer's lists FAQ says lead lists can include technology versions, and the example response on its API page carries a version beside a technology.
- Contacts. Lookups and lead lists can include email addresses, phone numbers and contacts, and email verification is a product of its own.
- In the browser and the CRM. Extensions and CRM integrations put the answer where a seller already works.
- Starting on your own. A free account and the published Pro and Business plans let you begin without talking to sales.
- Subdomains and certificates. The API page lists a subdomain finder, and the example response of a lookup carries certificate details.
Why teams look for an alternative
Each reason is a different job, and none is a fault in Wappalyzer.
- A dated dataset. A product or a model wants the whole dataset on a schedule, with stable keys and every change as its own dated event. Fokals delivers Technology Stack and Technology Changes refreshed daily to weekly, and every event carries the time it was observed.
- Company identity. A URL is not a company. Fokals keys every record to one stable company ID, with ticker, ISIN, LEI and FIGI on a listed company and the parent's identifiers on a brand.
- Licence fit. Embedding data in a customer-facing product needs written terms from either vendor. Wappalyzer's terms say so of its own data. Fokals licenses by written agreement, and embedding and redistribution are among the uses an agreement covers.
- More than technology. Hiring, intent scores, announcements and headcount sit on the same key, so a technology change can be read beside the roles and the announcements that explain it.
Wappalyzer and Fokals side by side
The Wappalyzer column restates the pages linked above, as read on 4 October 2026. The Fokals column follows the marketing stack dataset and its methodology.
| Aspect | Wappalyzer | Fokals |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Technology lookup, lead lists, website alerts and email verification for sales and go-to-market teams | Company data: five products on one company index, the marketing stack among them |
| Coverage | A website submitted to a lookup; lead lists built from its own database of websites | Companies: listed companies worldwide, the brands they own and verified private companies, each resolved to one company ID |
| Technology catalogue | More than 8,000 web technologies across more than 100 categories, as its directory states | A curated catalogue from advertising and analytics to commerce, CRM and infrastructure |
| How technology is found | Public signals on websites: HTML code, scripts, headers, cookies and other fingerprints | Its own detection across page content, scripts, network requests, response headers and DNS records, processed in-house |
| Changes over time | Website alerts; historic lookup results by month, up to twelve months in a request | First-seen and last-seen dates for every technology; one dated event for every adoption, removal and platform migration in Technology Changes |
| Beside technology | Company details, email addresses, phone numbers and contacts in lookups and lead lists | Hiring, intent scores, announcements, headcount and web traffic on the same company ID; weekly Market Series aggregated from them |
| Delivery | Website, APIs, browser extensions, CRM and automation integrations, bulk data products | REST API and bulk files as JSON, JSON Lines or CSV, with a manifest; a signed-in dashboard for browsing |
| Licensing | Published plans and a free account; resale or embedding in a customer-facing product needs written permission | Written agreement for internal use, embedding in a product or redistribution |
Fokals is delivered direct, by REST API and as bulk files, which you load into your own product or warehouse. The delivery page describes both routes, and the next section shows what a build on them involves.
Building a product feature on a feed of changes
Suppose your product is a prospecting tool, and you want a filter for companies that recently adopted a tool in one category. Three decisions shape the build.
How the data arrives. The first load comes from a bulk export, with a manifest that names the period, label versions and licence. After that, the API feed of website changes runs oldest first from a time you set, so the last cursor you received is the bookmark for the next call. That is an incremental sync with no overlapping windows to reconcile.
What a record means. Technology Changes holds one dated event for every change observed on a company's website: the observation time, the category of the change, what changed, whether it was added or removed and the values before and after, with the technology's name and category on technology and DNS events.
What the filter selects. Once the events are in your own store, the filter is one query.
select
company_id,
company,
technology_name,
observed_at
from company_tech_events
where category in ('technology', 'dns')
and change = 'added'
and technology_category = :category
and observed_at >= :fourteen_days_ago
order by observed_at desc;The filter takes two categories of event: technologies detected on the site and technologies detected in DNS records. For Acme Robotics, an invented company, an illustrative row would read: a marketing automation tool, added, observed on 30 September 2026. Five properties of the record belong in the product itself.
- A first observation is a baseline. A tool already in place when a company enters the data appears in Technology Stack with its first-seen date and writes no event, so your users never see an existing tool presented as a new adoption.
- A platform migration is one event. A commerce or content platform replaced by another is recorded once, with the platform before and the platform after. Read those events too if your category is a platform.
- A removal is confirmed before it is written. Tags that come and go with consent banners and tests stay out of the record, so a removal your product shows is one that held.
- An adoption is its own kind of event. A new account under a tool already in place is recorded separately, so the filter above selects adoptions and nothing else.
- Every event carries its observation time. Label the date in your product as the day the change was observed. The same time makes the feed safe to use point-in-time: a query as of any past day returns what was known that day.
Two guides take the design further. Adding technographic filters to a prospecting tool covers the serving table and its indexes, and building company change alerts covers the alert schema, the dedupe key and the wording.
Other alternatives worth weighing
Each line describes a vendor from its own website, as read on 4 October 2026.
- BuiltWith. BuiltWith profiles websites against a catalogue that its home page puts at more than 127,000 internet technologies, with historical usage, lead lists, JSON APIs and CRM integrations; see the guide to BuiltWith alternatives.
- TheirStack. TheirStack infers the technologies a company uses from job postings and offers them with job data through an app, an API, webhooks and datasets; see the guide to TheirStack alternatives.
- HG Insights. HG Insights describes technology install data that reaches behind the firewall, with IT spend and buyer intent data, and says on its home page that it is built for B2B technology teams.
Frequently asked questions
How does Wappalyzer detect technologies?
Its technology directory says it looks for public signals on websites, including HTML code, scripts, headers, cookies and other fingerprints, and matches them to the technologies it tracks. Website detection in general works this way. Fokals detects technologies from page content, scripts, network requests, response headers and DNS records, processes them in-house, and records each technology with its first-seen and last-seen dates on the company that runs it.
Is Wappalyzer free to use?
Its pricing page describes a free account with a monthly allowance of lookups and free sample lead lists. Lead lists, APIs and CRM integrations need a paid plan, and the page publishes Pro, Business and Enterprise plans. Read the page for the current allowance and terms, because plans change.
Can Wappalyzer data be embedded in a product?
Its terms of service say the data may not be sublicensed, resold, published or embedded in a customer-facing product without Wappalyzer's explicit written permission, and that enterprise or custom written terms may grant broader rights. Ask for those terms before you build. Fokals licenses by written agreement, and embedding in a product and redistribution are among the uses an agreement can cover.
What is the difference between Wappalyzer and BuiltWith?
Both detect technologies on websites and offer lookups, lists, APIs, browser extensions and CRM integrations. Wappalyzer's directory counts more than 8,000 web technologies, and BuiltWith's home page states more than 127,000 internet technologies. Two such counts may rest on different definitions, so test both on the websites and the technologies you care about.
How do I get technology changes as a feed?
Fokals records every adoption, removal and platform migration as a dated event in Technology Changes. A bulk export supplies the first load, and the API feed of website changes then runs oldest first from a time you set, so the last cursor is the bookmark for incremental sync. Wappalyzer offers website alerts, and its lookup documentation describes historic results grouped by month, up to twelve months in one request.
How often is website technology data refreshed?
It depends on the source. Wappalyzer's lookup documentation says cached results are, by default, ones verified within the last two months, and that a website can be scanned live on request. Fokals refreshes its marketing stack data daily to weekly and dates every change with the time it was observed, so a product can show when each change was seen.
The queries and code on this page are examples to adapt. Test them in your own environment before you rely on them.
What this page says about the products it names was checked against their public documentation on 4 October 2026. Product and company names are trademarks of their owners. Fokals is not affiliated with them or endorsed by them.