Launching today
BuiltWhen
When was this website actually built? (Not just domain age)
4 followers
When was this website actually built? (Not just domain age)
4 followers
Enter any website to see its estimated launch date, how it has changed and what it's built with. Evidence-based, not just domain age. Free, no signup.
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Hey Product Hunt! 👋
I'm Farouqk, the creator of BuiltWhen.
A big inspiration for this project was BuiltWith. Like many of you, whenever I find an interesting product, I immediately check what technologies power it.
But I kept running into another question: "When was this website actually built, and how has it evolved over time?"
Whenever I tried to find an answer, every existing tool just looked up the WHOIS domain registration date. And that date is almost always misleading:
- stripe.com was registered in 1995 (held by an unrelated owner for 16 years) before Stripe actually launched in late 2011.
- tesla.com sat parked for 24 years before Tesla acquired it in 2016.
- slack.com was registered in 1998, but the workplace chat tool launched in 2014.
Domains are bought, sold, parked, and flipped constantly. Domain registration age rarely equals website age.
So I built BuiltWhen (https://builtwhen.com) to bridge that gap.
How it works under the hood:
Instead of just checking DNS records, BuiltWhen synthesizes public historical evidence:
1. Wayback Machine Archives: Crawls historical snapshots and intelligently filters out "Domain For Sale" landers, parked PPC pages, and server error-holding screens to find the first real website content.
2. Sitemaps & Copyright Anchors: Cross-references `<lastmod>` timestamps and original copyright years.
3. Tech Stack & Redesign Timeline: Identifies when major layout redesigns happened and tracks framework migrations over time.
4. Verified Launch Badges: Free embeddable SVG badges for your footer or GitHub README (e.g., `Built November 2005 • Verified by BuiltWhen`).
It's completely free with zero sign-up required.
What I'd love your feedback on:
1. Try testing your own website or a favorite startup: Does the estimated launch month and confidence level match what you expected?
2. Are there specific historical signals or data points you'd like to see added to the timeline?
3. How can we make the embeddable badges and reports more useful for founders and agencies?
I'll be hanging out in the comments all day — excited to hear your thoughts and see what websites you look up! 🚀