Archive.today
Archive any webpage and search for archived pages.
URL
Description
Please carefully review recent developments regarding archive.today before you decide to use the tool.
Archive.today is a web archiving service that allows users to manually save snapshots of webpages. Each snapshot keeps an exact copy of the page as it looked in that moment, including text, images and design. This way, the content is preserved, even if the original page changes or is taken down.
Open source researchers can use Archive.today to save online information for future reference, or to search for archived information. The site offers the following features:
Snapshot creation: Save a page by entering the URL, and Archive.today creates a link to a permanent, static copy of the website. The snapshot captures HTML, CSS, JavaScript-generated content and images, and a screenshot of 1024x768 pixels. It does not preserve PDFs, XML feeds, RTF files, Office documents, Flash/Java applets, and most streaming-video containers, while live server-side functions (comments, search boxes, forms) appear frozen.
Searchable archive: Enter the URL of the site of interest in the second search box to look for results. Previous snapshots are searchable, making it easy to find and review earlier versions of a page. Advanced search operators (including insite:, quotes, and the * wildcard) are also supported.
Browser extension: A browser extension enables quick snapshots, so you don’t have to go through the main site each time.
Cost
Archive.today has no paid features, and describes itself as "privately funded", with a donations portal linked on the main page.
Level of difficulty
Requirements
No specific requirements
Limitations
File-type support
No native capture of PDF, Flash, audio or most video containers; such pages resolve as blank or “unsupported”, while large pages over 50 MB are rejected.
Critical evidence embedded in these formats will be lost unless you save an external copy.
Dynamic and gated content
Snapshots rely on the crawler’s public view; pages behind paywalls, log-ins or geo-blocks often render partially or not at all.
Don’t assume a paywalled Facebook post or subscriber-only article will be preserved.
Robots and takedown
The service ignores robots.txt and meta-noindex; it rarely removes pages except for DMCA/abuse cases.
Once archived, material is effectively permanent and might expose private data.
Performance and availability
High load, DDoS mitigation and Cloudflare/DNS quirks can cause outages or slow saves.
Time-sensitive captures may fail; retry later or use a secondary archiver.
Operator transparency
Run by a largely anonymous owner with no institutional backing.
Long-term continuity is uncertain; treat the service as convenient but not canonical storage.
Ethical Considerations
Copyright: Archiving paywalled or copyrighted pages may infringe local laws; use for evidence, not redistribution.
Privacy: Snapshots freeze personal data that subjects might later delete; weigh necessity vs. exposure.
Redundancy: For mission-critical evidence, double-save to the Wayback Machine or a local WARC, as Archive.today offers no public deletion policy nor any institutional preservation mandate.
Guides and articles
Archive.today official FAQ: Answers general questions on the site's functionality.
Bellingcat guide, How to Archive Open Source Materials: Compares Archive.today and the Wayback Machine.
Chrome “Archive Page” browser extension: Enables one-click saves and look-ups.
Tool provider
Unknown; you may want to read "archive.today: On the trail of the mysterious guerrilla archivist of the Internet".
Similar tools
Auto Archiver: Bellingcat's free and open-source tool allows users to automatically archive social media posts, videos and images.
Wayback Machine: The largest internet archival service, this non-profit digital library contains more than one trillion webpages.
Web Archives: A browser extension for viewing archived and cached versions of websites across multiple archiving services.
Bellingcat Team
September 2026
Last updated
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