urbanadventurer/whatwebNext generation web scanner
Developed by Andrew Horton urbanadventurer and Brendan Coles bcoles
Latest Release: v0.6.4. April 3, 2026
License: GPLv2
This product is subject to the terms detailed in the license agreement. For more information about WhatWeb visit https://github.com/urbanadventurer/
Wiki: https://github.com/urbanadventurer/WhatWeb/wiki/
If you have any questions, comments or concerns regarding WhatWeb, please consult the documentation prior to contacting one of the developers. Your feedback is always welcome.
WhatWeb identifies websites. Its goal is to answer the question, "What is that Website?". WhatWeb recognises web technologies including content management systems (CMS), blogging platforms, statistic/analytics packages, JavaScript libraries, web servers, and embedded devices. WhatWeb has over 1800 plugins, each to recognise something different. WhatWeb also identifies version numbers, email addresses, account IDs, web framework modules, SQL errors, and more.
WhatWeb can be stealthy and fast, or thorough but slow. WhatWeb supports an aggression level to control the trade off between speed and reliability. When you visit a website in your browser, the transaction includes many hints of what web technologies are powering that website. Sometimes a single webpage visit contains enough information to identify a website but when it does not, WhatWeb can interrogate the website further. The default level of aggression, called 'stealthy', is the fastest and requires only one HTTP request of a website. This is suitable for scanning public websites. More aggressive modes were developed for use in penetration tests.
Most WhatWeb plugins are thorough and recognise a range of cues from subtle to obvious. For example, most WordPress websites can be identified by the meta HTML tag, e.g. '', but a minority of WordPress websites remove this identifying tag but this does not thwart WhatWeb. The WordPress WhatWeb plugin has over 15 tests, which include checking the favicon, default installation files, login pages, and checking for "/wp-content/" within relative links.
Using WhatWeb to scan reddit.com.
$ ./whatweb reddit.com
http://reddit.com [301 Moved Permanently] Country[UNITED STATES][US], HTTPServer[snooserv], IP[151.101.65.140], RedirectLocation[https://www.reddit.com/], UncommonHeaders[retry-after,x-served-by,x-cache-hits,x-timer], Via-Proxy[1.1 varnish]
https://www.reddit.com/ [200 OK] Cookies[edgebucket,eu_cookie_v2,loid,rabt,rseor3,session_tracker,token], Country[UNITED STATES][US], Email[[email protected],[email protected]], Frame, HTML5, HTTPServer[snooserv], HttpOnly[token], IP[151.101.37.140], Open-Graph-Protocol[website], Script[text/javascript], Strict-Transport-Security[max-age=15552000; includeSubDomains; preload], Title[reddit: the front page of the internet], UncommonHeaders[fastly-restarts,x-served-by,x-cache-hits,x-timer], Via-Proxy[1.1 varnish], X-Frame-Options[SAMEORIGIN]
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WhatWeb - Next generation web scanner version 0.6.4.
Developed by Andrew Horton (urbanadventurer) and Brendan Coles (bcoles)
Homepage: https://morningstarsecurity.com/research/whatweb
Usage: whatweb [options] <URLs>
TARGET SELECTION:
<TARGETs> Enter URLs, hostnames, IP addresses, filenames or
IP ranges in CIDR, x.x.x-x, or x.x.x.x-x.x.x.x
format.
--input-file=FILE, -i Read targets from a file. You can pipe
hostnames or URLs directly with -i /dev/stdin.
TARGET MODIFICATION:
--url-prefix Add a prefix to target URLs.
--url-suffix Add a suffix to target URLs.
--url-pattern Insert the targets into a URL. Requires --input-file,
eg. www.example.com/%insert%/robots.txt
AGGRESSION:
The aggression level controls the trade-off between speed/stealth and
reliability.
--aggression, -a=LEVEL Set the aggression level. Default: 1.
Aggression levels are:
1. Stealthy Makes one HTTP request per target. Also follows redirects.
3. Aggressive If a level 1 plugin is matched, additional requests will be
made.
4. Heavy Makes a lot of HTTP requests per target. Aggressive tests from
all plugins are used for all URLs.
HTTP OPTIONS:
--user-agent, -U=AGENT Identify as AGENT instead of WhatWeb/0.6.3.
--header, -H Add an HTTP header. eg "Foo:Bar". Specifying a default
header will replace it. Specifying an empty value, eg.
"User-Agent:" will remove the header.
--follow-redirect=WHEN Control when to follow redirects. WHEN may be `never',
`http-only', `meta-only', `same-site', or `always'.
Default: always.
--max-redirects=NUM Maximum number of contiguous redirects. Default: 10.
AUTHENTICATION:
--user, -u=<user:password> HTTP basic authentication.
--cookie, -c=COOKIES Provide cookies, e.g. 'name=value; name2=value2'.
--cookiejar=FILE Read cookies from a file.
--no-cookies Disable automatic cookie handling (improves performance
with high thread counts).
### Cookie Handling
WhatWeb automatically handles cookies across redirects by default. This improves fingerprinting accuracy on sites requiring session management.
- `--cookie, -c=COOKIES` - Set initial cookies manually
- `--cookie-jar=FILE` - Load cookies from file
- `--no-cookies` - Disable automatic cookie handling
**Performance Note:** With high thread counts (>100), cookie handling may impact performance. Use `--no-cookies` for maximum speed on large scans.