Forelight vs BuiltWith

BuiltWith tells you what stack they used to have.

BuiltWith crawls websites and shows you the tech stack a company deployed weeks or months ago. Forelight reads Certificate Transparency logs in real time — you see the adoption event the minute it happens.

Free tier · 100 req/day · No credit card

Side-by-side comparison

Both tools detect technology adoption. The difference is when — and when is everything in outbound sales.

Feature Forelight BuiltWith
Detection latency minutes (cert issuance) days to weeks (crawl cycle)
Data source Certificate Transparency logs (public, real-time) Web crawl + JavaScript detection
SaaS adoption signals yes — cert SAN patterns yes — script tags, DNS
Infrastructure signals (new domains, subdomains) yes — 8 signal types no
Geographic expansion signals yes — ccTLD cert detection partial (crawl-based)
Domain velocity / growth signals yes no
Signal score (1–100) yes — with recency boost no
REST API with cursor pagination yes — JSON, Clay-native yes
Webhook delivery yes — real-time push no
Watchlist / account-based filtering yes no
Free tier yes — 100 req/day no
Starting price $99/month $295/month

What a 3-week lag costs you

BuiltWith's crawl cycle means you're calling on last month's news. These scenarios show when timing is the whole game.

SaaS adoption detected

BuiltWith
Detects HubSpot on acme.com 2–4 weeks after deployment. By then they're already trained and the deal is closed.
Forelight
Fires saas_adoption_detected within minutes of cert issuance — while they're still onboarding and vendor relationships aren't locked in.

New country market entry

BuiltWith
No dedicated signal. You'd need to notice a new domain in your own research.
Forelight
geographic_expansion fires the day acme.de gets its first cert. New market = new budget cycle forming right now.

Brand new company

BuiltWith
Crawl won't pick up a new domain until it's indexed and revisited — could be months for a quiet launch.
Forelight
fresh_domain fires when the domain is ≤30 days old. First company to reach them wins every seat.

Infrastructure scaling signal

BuiltWith
No infrastructure growth signals. Crawl only shows what's already deployed.
Forelight
infrastructure_expansion fires when 5+ new subdomains appear in 24h. Funding just closed or a major launch is underway.

Use both, or use one

Forelight and BuiltWith answer different questions. BuiltWith shows the full technology profile of a company's website. Forelight shows what changed — and when — based on infrastructure events.

Use BuiltWith when: you need a technology audit of a prospect's current stack, want to know which CMS or analytics tools they use, or are building a list of "everyone using Shopify."

Use Forelight when: you want to be first when a company adopts a new tool, enters a new market, spins up infrastructure, or is brand new. Real-time events, not historical snapshots.

Get the real-time signal

Free tier available. No credit card required. Start pulling live signals in minutes.

Free · Starter $99/mo · Growth $299/mo · Pro $499/mo