Weused electron spin resonance (ESR) to analyze several kinds of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) synthesized by different methods. We observed that ESR is a sensitive probe that can be used to observe major differences between samples of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), in relation to their proportion of magnetic catalysts, impurities or defects. We analyzed the ESR spectra of CNTs in the usual way, by three overlapping lines. We then, implemented a function to fit the spectra, which gave us the intensity, line width (DHPP), and resonance line position (g factor) of each component line. The asymmetric line, which is assigned to the conduction electrons, could be used as a fingerprint of CNT purity. However, this asymmetric line is not always observed, since the three ESR lines often overlap, particularly when there is a large amount of paramagnetic ions. We studied the ESR spectra for different samples and estimated their purity by comparing the resulting parameters with data obtained by Raman spectroscopy on the same samples.