To find out who hosts a website, enter its domain in our free website hosting checker. It resolves the domain to its IP address and tells you which company owns that IP, plus the city and country the IP is registered to. For most sites that company is the host. If the answer is Cloudflare, Fastly or Amazon CloudFront, you are looking at a CDN or proxy in front of the real server, and you need two or three more checks to see behind it.
All the tools in this guide are free, run in your browser and need nothing installed. Guests can run 5 server-side checks a day with no account, and a free My Botsy account (100% free, no spam) removes that cap. Every result below comes from lookups we ran on October 29, 2026.
What "hosting" actually means for a website
People usually mean one company, but a website touches up to four, and they are often different:
| Layer | What it does | How to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Web host | Runs the server that stores and serves the site's files | IP owner of the A record, unless a proxy sits in front |
| CDN or proxy | Caches and protects the site in front of the host | IP owner shows Cloudflare, Fastly, Akamai, CloudFront and similar |
| DNS provider | Answers lookups for the domain | NS records |
| Email provider | Receives mail for the domain | MX records |
| Registrar | Sold the domain name | WHOIS or RDAP |
The most common mistake is reading the registrar from WHOIS and calling it the host. Buying a domain at one company and hosting it at another is normal, so WHOIS answers a different question.
How to find a website's host, step by step
- Open the website hosting checker and enter the bare domain (
example.com) or a full URL. A full URL is reduced to its hostname automatically. - Click Submit. You get the ISP, the organization, the city, country, coordinates and time zone of the IP the domain points to.
- Read the ISP and Organization rows. A hosting company or a big platform's own name (Hetzner, OVH, DigitalOcean, GitHub, Wikimedia) means you have your answer.
- If the rows say Cloudflare, Fastly, Akamai or Amazon, treat it as a proxy and continue with the checks in the next section.
- Optionally run the DNS lookup on the same domain to see its NS and MX records, which tell you who runs its DNS and its email.
The checker looks up the first IPv4 address the domain returns. Sites with several servers can return a different IP on each lookup, but they normally belong to the same network, so the owner stays the same.
Real results: what the checker shows for well-known sites
We ran eight domains through the same lookup the hosting checker uses. Here is the IP returned and the network that owns it:
| Domain | IP | ISP / organization | Location shown | What it really means |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| craigslist.org | 208.82.237.129 | Craigslist, Inc. | San Francisco, US | Self-hosted on its own network |
| github.com | 140.82.113.4 | GitHub, Inc. | San Francisco, US | Own network |
| wikipedia.org | 198.35.26.224 | Wikimedia Foundation | San Francisco, US | Own network |
| gnu.org | 209.51.188.116 | Free Software Foundation / Hurricane Electric | Boston, US | FSF's servers in a Hurricane Electric data center |
| python.org | 151.101.128.223 | Fastly, Inc. | Montreal, CA | CDN in front of the origin |
| bbc.co.uk | 151.101.64.81 | Fastly, Inc. | Montreal, CA | CDN |
| example.com | 172.66.147.243 | Cloudflare, Inc. | Toronto, CA | Proxy |
| mercadolibre.com.ar | 3.33.182.45 | Amazon / AWS Global Accelerator | Montreal, CA | AWS edge network |
Two lessons stand out. First, the ISP and the organization can differ: for gnu.org the ISP row names the Free Software Foundation (the IP block is assigned to them) while the organization is Hurricane Electric, the network that carries it. Read both. Second, for every CDN row the city is meaningless. These networks use anycast, where the same IP is announced from data centers all over the world, so the database records one nominal location (here Toronto or Montreal) that has nothing to do with where the site's server is.
How to find the real host behind Cloudflare or another CDN
A proxy is designed to hide the origin server, so there is no guaranteed method. These checks, in order of effort, solve most cases. Try them first on our own site, mybotsy.com, which sits behind Cloudflare.
1. Read the HTTP response headers
Run the domain through the HTTP headers lookup. CDNs add their own headers, but the origin server's headers often pass straight through. For mybotsy.com the hosting checker shows only Cloudflare, Toronto, yet the response headers include server: cloudflare next to platform: hostinger, panel: hpanel and x-powered-by: PHP/8.1.34. That reveals the real host (Hostinger), its control panel and the PHP version in one request.
Other giveaways to look for: server: awselb/2.0 (an AWS load balancer, which mercadolibre.com.ar returned), x-served-by: cache-... and via: 1.1 varnish (Fastly, which python.org returned), x-amz- headers (Amazon S3 or CloudFront), x-vercel-id, x-github-request-id or x-nf-request-id (Vercel, GitHub Pages, Netlify), and x-powered-by: WP Engine or similar managed-host labels.
2. Check the DNS records
Look up NS and MX records with the DNS lookup. They don't show the web host directly, but they tell you who manages the domain. Our results: mybotsy.com uses damian.ns.cloudflare.com and leanna.ns.cloudflare.com for DNS and Google (aspmx.l.google.com) for email. mercadolibre.com.ar uses Amazon Route 53 (ns-476.awsdns-59.com and three more) plus Google for mail. Craigslist and gnu.org run their own name servers and mail servers, which fits the self-hosted picture from the first table.
Subdomains are worth a look too. A mail., ftp. or cpanel. subdomain is often left unproxied and points straight at the origin server. Put any IP you find into the IP lookup to see its owner.
3. Try a reverse lookup on any IP you find
The reverse IP lookup returns the hostname set for an IP (its PTR record), which can name the server. Our tests: 209.51.188.116 returns wildebeest1p.gnu.org and 208.82.237.129 returns www.craigslist.org. Cloudflare's 104.21.50.116 returns nothing but the IP itself, which is one more sign you hit the proxy rather than the server.
4. Look at the site itself
The footer, privacy policy or terms page often names the hosting company, because privacy laws require many sites to list who processes visitor data. Error pages (a 404 or a parked page) sometimes carry the host's branding as well.
Common mistakes when checking a site's host
- Trusting the location for a CDN. "Toronto" for a Cloudflare IP says nothing about where the site lives. Only trust the location when the IP belongs to a hosting company or the site's own network.
- Confusing registrar and host. WHOIS shows who sold the domain. Use the WHOIS lookup for the domain's age and registrar, not for hosting.
- Checking the wrong hostname.
example.comandwww.example.comcan point to different places, and so can a shop onshop.example.com. Check the exact hostname you care about. - Reading a parked or failed domain as a host. If a domain doesn't resolve, the checker returns an error rather than a result. A domain parked at a registrar shows the registrar's parking servers.
- Expecting certainty behind a proxy. A well-configured site behind Cloudflare strips the origin headers and keeps every subdomain proxied. If none of the checks reveal the host, it is deliberately hidden, and the only official route is a report through the CDN's abuse form, which forwards it to the host.
Why you might need to know who hosts a site
The usual reasons: reporting phishing or copyright abuse to the company that can take the site down, sizing up a competitor's stack, checking that a site you're about to buy from isn't on a throwaway server, or planning a migration from a host you inherited along with the website. For the scam case, our guide on how to check if a website is legit combines the hosting check with WHOIS age, SSL and redirects. If DNS records are new to you, start with how to check DNS records.
Ready to try it? Put any domain into the website hosting checker, then confirm the answer with the HTTP headers lookup and the DNS lookup. They're free, need no account and run in your browser, so a full check takes under a minute.
Frequently asked questions
How can I tell who is hosting a website?
Enter the domain in a free website hosting checker. It resolves the domain to an IP address and shows the company that owns that IP. If that company is a CDN such as Cloudflare or Fastly, check the HTTP headers and DNS records to find the real host behind it.
Why does the hosting checker say Cloudflare?
The site uses Cloudflare as a proxy, so its domain points to Cloudflare's IPs instead of the real server. Cloudflare's network sits in front of the host. Response headers, unproxied subdomains or the site's privacy policy often reveal the actual hosting company.
Does WHOIS show the hosting provider?
No. WHOIS shows the registrar that sold the domain and the registration dates. The host can be a different company. WHOIS name servers show the DNS provider, which is also not necessarily the host.
Is the server location in a hosting checker accurate?
For a normal hosting company it is usually close to the real data center. For CDNs such as Cloudflare, Fastly or Akamai it is not, because the same IP is served from many cities worldwide.
Can I find the host of a website hidden behind Cloudflare?
Sometimes. Leaked headers like platform or x-powered-by, mail or FTP subdomains that point straight to the server, and the site's legal pages often name it. A well-configured site can stay hidden, and abuse reports should then go through Cloudflare's abuse form.
Is the website hosting checker free?
Yes. It's free and runs in any browser. Guests can run 5 checks a day without an account, and a free My Botsy account, with no spam, removes that limit.
