Tech Stack Detector vs BuiltWith — Build Your Own for 1/15th the Price

What BuiltWith charges\n\n$295/mo for basic, $995/mo for pro, $2500/mo for enterprise. Their moat is 17 years of historical data. For present-state detection, the gap between them and a well-built scanner is small.\n\n## The detection taxonomy\n\n14 categories: JS frameworks, meta-frameworks, CSS frameworks, CMS, analytics, CDN, hosting, payments, chat, email, fonts, auth, video, databases.\n\n## Detection signals\n\nFive places to look:\n\n1. HTTP headers — x-powered-by, server, cf-ray, x-vercel-id\n2. HTML meta — \n3. Script URLs — googletagmanager.com → GA4\n4. Asset paths — /_next/ → Next.js, /_nuxt/ → Nuxt\n5. JS globals — requires headless browser\n\n## The 1/15th path\n\nlazymac Tech Stack Detector runs signals 1–4 in under 300ms. Free 100/day. Pro $14.99/mo unlimited — 1/20th of BuiltWith basic.\n\n``bash\ncurl 'https://api.lazy-mac.com/tech-stack/api/v1/detect?url=https://vercel.com'\n`\n\nOr via MCP: npx -y @lazymac/mcp` then ask Claude: *What's vercel.com built with?*\n\n## When BuiltWith still wins\n\nHistorical data — irreplaceable for trend research. For present-state detection, you're paying 20x for features you don't use.

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