View Page Source Online - Free HTML Viewer

Use this view page source tool to see the raw HTML a website returns for any public URL, without opening browser developer tools. Enter an address and you get the full code with line numbers, a search box, and a summary of the title, meta description, links, images, scripts and stylesheets.

What Does View Page Source Mean?

View page source shows the original HTML document a website sends for a URL, before your browser runs scripts or rearranges anything. It is plain text: the doctype, a head section with the title, meta tags, canonical link and structured data, and a body with headings, links, images and scripts.

Developers use it to debug markup. SEOs use it to confirm what a search engine can read the moment it requests a page. Because it is the starting HTML, it answers a simple question: is this element really in the page, or does something add it later?

View Source vs. Inspect Element

View source is the HTML as delivered. Inspect (the Elements panel in browser developer tools) shows the live page after JavaScript has changed it. If a title tag or product description appears in Inspect but not in the source, a script is injecting it, and crawlers that do not run scripts may miss it.

How to Use the View Page Source Tool

You only need a web address, and the steps below take less than a minute.

1. Type or paste a page address into the field that shows the placeholder https://example.com. If you leave out https://, it is added for you.
2. Submit the form with the button under the field.
3. Check the line above the code. It shows the fetched address, the HTTP status code and the size in bytes.
4. Read the summary cards: Page Title, Meta Description, Lines, File Size, HTML Tags, Links, Images, Scripts, Stylesheets and Doctype.
5. Type a word or tag into Search in source code to find it, such as canonical, noindex or application/ld+json.
6. Use Toggle word wrap to fold long lines and Toggle line numbers to show or hide the number column.
7. Press Copy to put the code on your clipboard or Download to save it as an HTML file named after the site.

Worked Example: Reading the Source of a Blog Post

Say you enter a blog post address and the tool returns a page of 1,240 lines. Here is how you might read a typical result.

The Page Title card shows "Running Shoes for Flat Feet: 2024 Guide", which is 38 characters, so it should fit in a search result. The Meta Description card is empty. That is your first finding: the page has no description, so search engines will write their own snippet.

You then search for canonical and find one link tag pointing to the same address, which is correct. A search for noindex returns no matches, so nothing in the HTML blocks indexing. With 22 images, you search for alt= and compare the matches to the image count to spot missing alt text. In about two minutes you have a short, specific to-do list.

How to Read the Results and What to Fix

Each summary card points to a specific check, and most problems have a quick fix.

Page Title and Meta Description

These show what the head section declares. A common guideline is a title of roughly 50 to 60 characters and a description of roughly 120 to 160, though Google may rewrite either. If a card is missing, the tag is absent or written in a form the summary could not read, so search the code to confirm. Add a unique, descriptive tag to fix it.

HTTP Status and File Size

A 200 status means the page loaded. A 301 or 302 means you were redirected, and 404 or 500 means the address or the website has a problem. Large HTML, such as several hundred KB, often points to inline scripts, inline styles or bloated markup. Compare it with your full page size to see where the weight sits.

Links, Images, Scripts and Stylesheets

These are counts of anchor tags with an href, image tags, script tags and stylesheet references (linked and inline). A very high script count can slow rendering, so consider removing unused third-party scripts. Many images with few alt attributes is an accessibility and image SEO gap. A page with almost no links may be hard for crawlers to move through.

Doctype and Charset

HTML5 is the standard doctype, written as <!DOCTYPE html>. If it says HTML 4.x or Not detected, the page may render in quirks mode. The charset is shown under the code. UTF-8 is the usual choice, and a missing or mismatched value can produce garbled characters.

How to View Page Source on Chrome, Safari, Mac and Mobile

Browsers have built-in shortcuts, but they differ by device, which is why many people prefer a tool that works the same everywhere.

• Chrome on Windows or Linux: press Ctrl+U, or right-click the page and choose View page source.
• Chrome on Mac: press Command+Option+U.
• Safari on Mac: first enable the Develop menu in Safari settings under Advanced, then choose Develop and Show Page Source, or press Option+Command+U.
• Mobile browsers: there is usually no menu item. On Android Chrome you can type view-source: before the address, but iPhone and iPad browsers offer no equivalent, so paste the address into this tool instead.

On a phone or tablet, this page works like any other form: paste the address, submit it and scroll through the code. You can also copy it or download it for later.

Who Uses a Page Source Viewer and When

A page source viewer helps anyone who needs to see exactly what a page contains, and these are the most common situations.

• SEO audits: confirm the title, meta description, canonical tag, robots meta tag, hreflang links and structured data are in the delivered HTML.
• Competitor research: see how a competitor structures headings, schema and internal links on a page that ranks well.
• Developer debugging: check for unclosed tags, wrong doctype, missing viewport tag or duplicate scripts.
• Migration checks: make sure staging tags such as noindex did not reach the live page. Pair it with a bulk status code check to confirm redirects.
• Content and tracking checks: search for an analytics ID, a verification meta tag or a pixel to confirm it is installed.

Best Practices and Troubleshooting Tips

A few habits make the output more reliable and save time.

• Use the exact address. The version with www, without www, with a trailing slash or with query parameters can return different HTML. Test the one that matters.
• Search for single tags. Typing <h1 shows how many top-level headings exist. Typing rel="canonical" jumps straight to the canonical link.
• Turn on word wrap for minified code. Many sites compress their HTML into a few very long lines, and wrapping makes them readable.
• Download before comparing. Save a copy before and after a template change so you can compare the two files in a text editor.
• Check headers separately. Redirects, caching and security settings live in response headers, not the HTML. Use an HTTP header checker for those.

If the Result Looks Wrong

If you see an error or a blank result, first check the spelling of the address and that it starts with http or https. Pages that need a login, block automated requests or are not publicly reachable cannot be fetched. If the title you see in your browser differs from the Page Title card, a script probably rewrites it after the page loads.

Limitations to Keep in Mind

This tool shows the raw HTML returned for the address, and a browser may receive different content. Elements built by JavaScript after load, such as some product listings, reviews or injected tags, will not appear in the code you see here. Content personalized by location, device or login state may also differ from what you see in your own browser.

The summary counts are simple tallies of patterns found in the text, so tags that sit inside comments or inline scripts can be included. Treat them as quick indicators, not exact audit numbers. Very large pages may also be returned incomplete.

For a deeper look at content weight, run the code to text ratio check next. If the markup looks fine but the page feels slow, test it with the page speed checker. You can find more tools like these in the website audit and performance category.

Paste a URL into the field above to view page source in seconds, search the code for the tags that matter and copy or download the result for your audit notes.