HTTP Headers

Inspect the request headers your browser sends, plus a full HTTP headers reference.

About this tool

Inspect the HTTP request headers your browser sends with every web request, and explore a reference guide to the most important request and response headers. The 'My Browser Headers' tab fetches your headers via httpbin.org and displays them with plain-English descriptions. Great for developers debugging CORS, authentication, and caching issues.

How to Inspect HTTP Headers

1Click 'My Browser Headers' to see the headers your browser is currently sending.
2Click 'Refresh' to fetch a fresh copy of your headers.
3Hover over a header name to read its plain-English description.
4Switch to the 'Headers Reference' tab for a searchable guide to common HTTP headers.
5Use the search box in the Reference tab to quickly find a specific header.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are HTTP headers?+

HTTP headers are key-value pairs sent with every request and response. They carry metadata like the content type, authentication tokens, caching rules, and browser information.

How does the tool get my browser's headers?+

It makes a fetch request to httpbin.org/get, which echoes your request headers back as JSON. No data is stored.

What is the User-Agent header?+

The User-Agent header tells the server which browser and operating system you're using. Servers can use this to serve different content to different devices.

What is CORS and why does it involve headers?+

CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) is enforced via HTTP headers like Origin, Access-Control-Allow-Origin, and Access-Control-Allow-Methods. The browser uses these to decide whether a cross-origin request is allowed.

Looking for a deeper guide on this topic? Browse the Searchlight blog.

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About this tool

How to Inspect HTTP Headers

1Click 'My Browser Headers' to see the headers your browser is currently sending.

2Click 'Refresh' to fetch a fresh copy of your headers.

3Hover over a header name to read its plain-English description.

4Switch to the 'Headers Reference' tab for a searchable guide to common HTTP headers.

5Use the search box in the Reference tab to quickly find a specific header.