Get HTTP Headers

Free HTTP Headers Checker — View Server Response Headers

Every web request returns a set of HTTP response headers sent by the server before the page content. These headers contain critical information about how the browser and search engine should handle the page — caching instructions, content type, encoding, security policies, redirect rules, and more. This free tool retrieves and displays all HTTP response headers for any URL instantly.

Enter any URL to see its full server response headers. You can use this tool to debug redirect chains, verify caching configuration, check security headers, confirm content encoding, and troubleshoot server configuration issues that affect SEO and performance.

Understanding HTTP headers is essential for technical SEO. Misconfigured headers are a common cause of crawl issues, duplicate content, slow page loads, and security vulnerabilities.

Key HTTP Headers and What They Mean

Content-Type. Specifies the media type of the response (e.g., text/html, application/json). Incorrect content types can prevent browsers and crawlers from processing pages correctly.

Cache-Control. Instructs browsers and CDNs how long to cache a response. Proper caching reduces server load and improves page speed for returning visitors.

Location. Present on redirect responses (301, 302, 307, 308). Shows where the server is redirecting the request. Critical for diagnosing redirect chains.

X-Robots-Tag. Controls search engine indexing at the HTTP level, useful for non-HTML files like PDFs and images where meta tags cannot be placed.

Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS). Forces browsers to use HTTPS for future requests. Improves security and removes HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect overhead.

Content-Encoding. Shows whether the server is compressing responses (gzip, br). Compression reduces transfer size and improves page speed.

SEO-Relevant Headers to Check

Server. Reveals the web server software (Apache, Nginx, Cloudflare). Useful for security audits.

ETag / Last-Modified. Enable conditional requests, allowing browsers to check whether a cached resource has changed before downloading it again.

Vary. Tells caches which request headers affect the cached response. Important for mobile vs desktop caching and language negotiation.

X-Frame-Options / CSP. Security headers that prevent clickjacking and cross-site scripting attacks. Missing security headers are flagged by security scanners and can affect user trust.

Related Tools

• Gzip Compression Checker – Verify server compression is enabled.
• WWW Redirect Checker – Test redirect behavior for your domain.
• SSL Checker – Verify HTTPS certificate status.
• Page Speed Checker – Test overall page performance.

Frequently Asked Questions