WAF & CDN detector
Find out what sits in front of any site — the WAF or CDN (Cloudflare, Akamai, CloudFront, Fastly, Sucuri, Imperva), the bot manager (DataDome, PerimeterX, Kasada, Cloudflare Bot Management), the web server and the CMS. We fetch through a residential proxy with a real browser TLS fingerprint and read both the response headers and the page, so the result is what an actual visitor sees. Free, no account.
WAF or CDN — and why a scraper cares
A CDN caches your pages at the edge for speed; a WAF inspects each incoming request and blocks the ones it judges bot-like. Most big providers are both at once, which is exactly why scraping breaks: the CDN would happily serve a browser, but the WAF layer in front rejects a request whose TLS handshake, header order or IP reputation gives it away as automated. Knowing which provider guards a site tells you what a request has to look like to get through — Cloudflare, Akamai and DataDome each fingerprint differently. This tool reads the site through a residential IP with a real Chrome TLS profile, so a clean 200 here means a genuine browser gets in.
What the detector reads
- Response headers fetched through a residential proxy — the fingerprint an external visitor receives, not a cached or geo-shifted copy.
- Five categories at once: WAF/CDN (Cloudflare, Akamai, CloudFront, Fastly, Sucuri, Imperva, Vercel, Netlify, GitHub, Varnish, Google), bot management (DataDome, PerimeterX, Kasada, Akamai & Cloudflare Bot Management), active challenges (Cloudflare, reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, press-and-hold), the web server (nginx, Apache, LiteSpeed, IIS…) and the CMS/framework (WordPress, Drupal, Shopify, Wix, Next.js…) — each with the exact header or page signal that gave it away.
- Security headers present or missing: HSTS, CSP, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy and Permissions-Policy.
Header detection is a fast, strong first signal, not the whole story. Some WAFs hide their headers, and JavaScript-based bot defences like DataDome or PerimeterX leave little header trace — a challenge on an actual request confirms them. A clean result here means no provider announced itself in the headers, which is necessary, not sufficient.
From "detected" to "getting through"
Once you know the WAF, the question is how to fetch the site anyway — for a price monitor, a dataset, an AI pipeline. That is what QuanticData does: requests exit from residential IPs with a real browser TLS fingerprint and escalate to a stealth browser when a page challenges bots, and the scraping API returns the response headers on every call, so your code can branch on the provider automatically. If the WAF is the wall, residential exit plus a real handshake is how you walk through the door.
Questions about WAF & CDN detection
What does the WAF & CDN detector check?
It fetches your site through a residential proxy with a real browser TLS fingerprint and reads the response headers, matching them against the signatures of the major WAF and CDN providers: Cloudflare, Akamai, AWS CloudFront, Fastly, Sucuri, Imperva/Incapsula, Vercel, Netlify, GitHub Pages, Varnish and Google Frontend.
What is the difference between a WAF and a CDN?
A CDN caches and serves your pages from edge locations for speed. A WAF inspects incoming requests and blocks ones it judges malicious or bot-like. Many providers do both — Cloudflare and Akamai are CDN and WAF at once — which is why a scraper that ignores the WAF layer gets blocked even though the CDN would happily serve a browser.
Why does a scraper need to know the WAF?
Because the WAF decides whether your request looks human. Knowing it is Cloudflare versus Akamai versus DataDome tells you which fingerprinting it uses and what a request must present — TLS handshake, header order, IP reputation — to get through. This tool reads the site through a residential proxy with a real browser TLS profile, so the result reflects what a genuine browser sees, not a datacenter bot.
Does a clean result mean the site has no protection?
Not necessarily. Some WAFs hide their headers, and bot defences like DataDome or PerimeterX work mainly through JavaScript challenges that leave little header trace. Header detection is a strong, fast first signal; a challenge on an actual request is the confirmation.
Is the WAF detector free?
Yes, and no account is needed — just a quick bot check. It reads one site per run through a residential proxy so you see the headers an external visitor receives, not a cached or geo-different copy.
Can I detect the WAF from code?
Yes. This page runs on the QuanticData scrape API, which returns the response headers on every fetch. One call gives you the same headers in JSON, so you can branch your scraping logic on the provider — and route the request through residential proxies when the WAF is strict.
You know the wall. Now walk through it.
Residential exits, real browser TLS, response headers on every call — $0.0002 per page, $2 free every month.
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