# Tech Stack Detector (`pontio/tech-stack-detector`) Actor

The CMS, e-commerce platform, analytics, marketing, chat, payments and email tools a website runs, from its homepage, contact pages and DNS records.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/pontio/tech-stack-detector.md
- **Developed by:** [Gabor Molnar](https://apify.com/pontio) (community)
- **Categories:** Developer tools, Lead generation, Marketing
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$2.00 / 1,000 technology detecteds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Tech Stack Detector

Find the CMS, e-commerce platform, JavaScript framework, analytics, marketing, chat, payments, cookie consent, CDN, security and business-app tools a website runs. Pass one domain or a list of up to 1,000 in a single run. For each site the Actor reads its homepage plus up to three of its contact, about and imprint pages, together with its DNS records (MX, TXT), and returns every technology it can fingerprint, with the exact evidence that matched. You pay only for sites where at least one technology was found.

### What you get

One dataset item per site you send. Here is one, for input `shopify.com`:

```json
{
  "domain": "shopify.com",
  "reasonCode": "detected",
  "technologies": [
    {
      "name": "Shopify",
      "category": "ecommerce",
      "source": "html",
      "evidence": "cdn.shopify.com"
    },
    {
      "name": "Google Workspace",
      "category": "email-hosting",
      "source": "dns",
      "evidence": "aspmx.l.google.com"
    }
  ],
  "pagesCrawled": ["https://www.shopify.com/"]
}
```

### Use it when

- You are qualifying leads and want to know if a prospect already runs a competing or complementary tool.
- You are researching a market segment: which CMS, e-commerce or analytics vendors dominate a list of sites.
- You track a competitor's stack for changes (pair it with a scheduled run).
- An agent needs one typed technology list per domain, with the evidence to justify each one.

### Input

| Field | Type | Required | What it does |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `domains` | array of strings | yes | The websites to scan, up to 1,000 per run. A URL or an email address is accepted and reduced to its site, so `https://acme.com/pricing` and `jane@acme.com` both mean `acme.com`. A site that appears more than once is scanned and charged once. |

### Output

| Field | What it holds |
| --- | --- |
| `domain` | The site that was scanned, normalized. |
| `reasonCode` | What happened. See the pricing table. |
| `technologies` | Every technology fingerprinted. `category` groups it (cms, ecommerce, framework, analytics, marketing, chat, payments, consent, cdn, email-hosting, email-sending, security, business-apps). `source` says whether it was seen in the page's HTML or the domain's MX/TXT records. `evidence` is the exact snippet, MX host or TXT record that matched, so you can see why. |
| `pagesCrawled` | The pages actually read, after redirects (the homepage plus any contact/about pages found from it; DNS-only detections list none). |

Around 80 technologies are fingerprinted today. A technology missing from `technologies` means it wasn't seen in the static HTML or DNS — never that the site definitely doesn't run it. There is no "we checked every known technology and confirmed none of these" claim; the list only ever grows with what's found.

### Pricing

Pay per event, {{PRICE}} per 1,000 sites with at least one technology detected, charged on the `tech-stack-detector-detected` event.

You pay only when at least one technology was recognized. A page that loads with nothing recognizable is free — a JavaScript-rendered site's markup can look identical to one running nothing on our list, so an empty result is never billed as a conclusive "runs nothing".

| `reasonCode` | Charged |
| --- | --- |
| `detected` | yes |
| `none_detected` (the page and DNS held nothing we recognize) | no |
| `domain_not_found` (DNS says the domain does not exist) | no |
| `website_blocked` (the site refused us with 401, 403 or 429) | no |
| `website_unreachable` (no DNS, no connection, a timeout, or a server error) | no |
| `invalid_domain` (an IP, a bare TLD, `localhost`, a malformed name) | no |

If a site is blocked or unreachable, DNS-only detections (an email or security vendor seen in MX/TXT) are still reported in `technologies`, but the row stays free — the primary signal, the page itself, never loaded.

If you set a maximum total charge for a run, the Actor stops as soon as that limit is reached instead of working for free. Items after that point are left out of the dataset and not charged, and the run log says how many; submit them in a new run.

### Limits

- Fingerprints come from a fixed table of markup and DNS patterns, not from running JavaScript or reading HTTP response headers. A technology that only shows up after the page's own scripts run is not seen.
- At most four pages per site: the homepage plus up to three contact, about, team or imprint pages linked from it — not a crawl of the whole site.
- Sites are scanned one after another. If you set a maximum charge for the run, or the run reaches its timeout, it stops there. The items already written stay in the dataset, so you can re-run the remainder.

### Personal data

The Actor reads only pages a site shows to every visitor, at most four per site, plus its public DNS records, and identifies itself with an honest User-Agent. Results describe the site's technology stack, not people. Results go to your own Apify dataset under your account's retention settings. The Actor keeps no copy.

# Changelog

This Actor's version history is a separate document: https://apify.com/pontio/tech-stack-detector/changelog.md

# Actor input Schema

## `domains` (type: `array`):

Websites to detect technologies on, as domains or URLs, e.g. example.com (max 1000 per run). Repeats of the same site are dropped. Charged once per site where at least one technology was detected.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "domains": [
    "shopify.com"
  ]
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

Results produced by this run, in its default dataset.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "domains": [
        "shopify.com"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("pontio/tech-stack-detector").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "domains": ["shopify.com"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("pontio/tech-stack-detector").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "domains": [
    "shopify.com"
  ]
}' |
apify call pontio/tech-stack-detector --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,pontio/tech-stack-detector"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/8NoEhCASKVLpUMyVj/builds/nPOKd2QgPjDQMgNfr/openapi.json