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HTTP Headers Analyzer

Paste HTTP response headers to get a security score, caching analysis, CORS breakdown, and plain-English explanations.

What are HTTP response headers?

HTTP response headers are metadata sent by a server alongside a response body. They control browser behavior including caching, security policies, content encoding, and CORS. Properly configured headers significantly improve security and performance of web applications.

Security headers like Content-Security-Policy, Strict-Transport-Security, and X-Frame-Options are critical for protecting against common web attacks like XSS, clickjacking, and man-in-the-middle attacks.

How to Get Your Response Headers

  1. Browser DevTools — Open DevTools (F12), go to the Network tab, click any request, and copy the Response Headers section.
  2. curl — Run curl -I https://yoursite.com to see response headers in the terminal.
  3. Online scanners — Sites like securityheaders.com provide headers for public URLs.

Security Scoring

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most important security header?

Content-Security-Policy (CSP) is the most impactful security header. It controls which resources the browser is allowed to load, effectively preventing XSS attacks. Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS) is equally important for HTTPS sites.

Why should I remove the Server and X-Powered-By headers?

These headers reveal your server software and version (e.g., "nginx/1.18.0" or "PHP/8.2"). Attackers can use this information to target known vulnerabilities. Removing or obfuscating them is a basic security hardening step.

What does Cache-Control: no-store mean?

no-store means the response must not be stored in any cache — not in the browser, not in shared proxies. Use this for sensitive pages like banking dashboards or user-specific data that should never be cached.