How to Check What Hosting Provider a Website Uses (2026 Guide)

Q: Can I find the hosting provider using an IP address?

Yes. You can run a WHOIS lookup on the IP address (e.g., via whois.domaintools.com or ipinfo.io) to find the ASN (Autonomous System Number) and the organisation that owns that IP block—usually the hosting or cloud provider.

Q: Is it possible for websites to hide their hosting provider?

Yes. Websites that use a CDN like Cloudflare, Fastly, or Akamai proxy all traffic, so their origin hosting provider is masked behind the CDN's IP addresses. In those cases, you can identify the CDN but not always the underlying host.

Why Find Out Who Hosts a Website?

Knowing the hosting provider behind a website is valuable in several scenarios:

Competitive intelligence: See whether rivals use shared hosting, VPS, managed WordPress hosts, or enterprise cloud platforms like AWS or Google Cloud.
Sales and lead generation: Hosting agencies and managed service providers can identify prospects on specific platforms to target with migration or upgrade offers.
Security research: Identify whether a suspect domain is hosted on known bulletproof or abuse-prone infrastructure.
Due diligence: When acquiring a website or domain, confirm the infrastructure before completing the transaction.
Performance benchmarking: Compare how different hosting providers affect real-world load times and availability.

Fastest Method: Automated Tech Scanner

The easiest and most reliable way to find a website's hosting provider is to use Web Reveal—a free technology scanner that automatically detects the hosting provider, CDN, CMS, JavaScript framework, analytics tools, and full tech stack for any URL in seconds.

Simply enter the website's URL on the Web Reveal homepage and hit scan. The results page will show the detected hosting provider (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud, Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Cloudflare Pages, Vercel, Netlify) alongside all other technology layers.

Web Reveal performs live detection—it analyses the site in real time rather than relying on a cached database—so results reflect what is actually deployed at the time of the scan.

You can also install the Web Reveal Chrome extension to see hosting information passively in a toolbar popup as you browse any website.

DNS and WHOIS Lookup

DNS records and WHOIS data often reveal the hosting provider, even when other signals are hidden behind a CDN.

A Record lookup

The A record maps a domain to an IPv4 address. Doing a DNS lookup on a domain reveals its IP address, which you can then trace to a hosting company. Use any of these free tools:

MXToolbox DNS Lookup – mxtoolbox.com/DNSLookup.aspx
Google Dig – toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/dig/
nslookup – run nslookup example.com in your terminal

NS Record lookup

The NS (Name Server) record reveals which DNS provider manages the domain. Hosting providers often run their own name servers (e.g., ns1.bluehost.com, ns1.siteground.net), making this a quick shortcut to identify managed hosting platforms.

WHOIS lookup

A WHOIS query returns domain registration data. The Registrant and Name Server fields can confirm which hosting company is involved. Use who.is or whois.domaintools.com for free WHOIS lookups.

IP Address Lookup

Once you have the IP address from a DNS lookup, a reverse IP or ASN lookup will reveal which organisation owns that IP block—usually the hosting or cloud provider.

ipinfo.io – Enter an IP address to get the ASN, organisation name, and location instantly.
bgp.he.net – Hurricane Electric's BGP toolkit for detailed ASN and prefix information.
arin.net / ripe.net – Regional Internet Registries where IP block ownership is officially recorded.

For example, an IP in the 34.x.x.x range belongs to Google Cloud, while 52.x.x.x and 54.x.x.x ranges commonly point to Amazon AWS EC2 instances.

Reading HTTP Response Headers

HTTP response headers frequently contain hosting and infrastructure clues. Open your browser's developer tools (F12), go to the Network tab, reload the page, click the main document request, and inspect the Response Headers.

Key headers to look for:

Server: – May name the web server software and sometimes the host (e.g., Server: nginx, Server: LiteSpeed, Server: Netlify).
X-Powered-By: – Sometimes reveals the server-side language or platform (e.g., WordPress VIP).
CF-Ray: – Cloudflare-specific header confirming the site is behind Cloudflare.
X-Amz-Cf-Id: – Confirms Amazon CloudFront CDN.
X-Vercel-Id: – Confirms the site is hosted on Vercel.
X-Netlify: – Confirms Netlify hosting.

CDN vs. Hosting Provider: What's the Difference?

Many websites use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) like Cloudflare, Fastly, or Akamai to proxy all traffic. When a CDN is in use, DNS lookups return the CDN's IP addresses rather than the origin server's IP, obscuring the underlying host.

In this case, you can identify the CDN but not always the underlying hosting provider through DNS alone. Tools like Web Reveal can sometimes detect the origin host through server headers or other signals even when a CDN is present.

Example: A site might be hosted on AWS EC2 but fronted by Cloudflare. DNS reveals Cloudflare; the Server header might reveal Apache or nginx; HTTP response header patterns may help identify AWS as the origin.

Common Hosting Providers and Their Signals

Here are some quick identifiers for popular hosting platforms:

Shared & Managed WordPress Hosting

Bluehost: NS records like ns1.bluehost.com; IP ranges in Newfold Digital blocks.
SiteGround: NS records like ns1.siteground.net; rDNS hostnames containing siteground.com.
WP Engine: X-Powered-By: WP Engine or Server: wpengine response headers.
Kinsta: X-Kinsta-Cache response header.

Cloud Platforms

AWS: IP ranges published at ip-ranges.amazonaws.com; X-Amz-* headers; EC2 rDNS like ec2-x-x-x-x.compute.amazonaws.com.
Google Cloud: IP ranges in 34.x.x.x and 35.x.x.x blocks; rDNS containing bc.googleusercontent.com.
Microsoft Azure: IP ranges published by Microsoft; rDNS containing cloudapp.net or azure.com.
DigitalOcean: ASN AS14061; rDNS hostnames containing digitalocean.com.
Hetzner: ASN AS24940; rDNS containing hetzner.com or your-server.de.

Static & Serverless Hosts

Vercel: X-Vercel-Id response header; CNAME pointing to *.vercel.app.
Netlify: X-Netlify or Server: Netlify response headers; CNAME to *.netlify.app.
GitHub Pages: CNAME to *.github.io; IP in GitHub's published range.
Cloudflare Pages: CF-Ray header; CNAME to *.pages.dev.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I find out what hosting provider a website uses?

The fastest way is to use Web Reveal—a free technology scanner that automatically detects the hosting provider and full tech stack for any URL. Alternatively, do a DNS lookup to get the IP address, then run an IP WHOIS or ASN lookup to identify the organisation that owns the IP block.

Can I find the hosting provider using an IP address?

Yes. Once you have the IP address, use a service like ipinfo.io or bgp.he.net to look up the ASN and organisation name. This will usually tell you whether the IP belongs to AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, or another provider.

Is it possible for websites to hide their hosting provider?

Yes. When a website uses a CDN like Cloudflare, Fastly, or Akamai, the CDN's IP addresses are returned by DNS lookups instead of the origin server's IP. This means you can identify the CDN but not always the underlying host without additional signals.

What free tools can tell me who hosts a website?

Web Reveal is the fastest free option for detecting hosting and the full tech stack. Other free tools include Who.is, MXToolbox, ipinfo.io, and SecurityTrails for DNS and WHOIS lookups.