Web Archiving Tools Beyond the Wayback Machine

The Wayback Machine is the biggest web archive, but it misses pages, struggles with some interactive sites and can remove captures on request. These tools fill the gaps, whether you want to find an old page, save one yourself or track changes.

Search many archives at once

Memento Time Travel (timetravel.mementoweb.org) checks several public archives for a page and shows the captures closest to the date you choose. It's a good first stop when the Wayback Machine has nothing.

Save a page on demand

• archive.today (archive.ph): saves a copy and a screenshot of a page when you ask, and often captures pages the Wayback Machine can't.
• Perma.cc: run by Harvard Law School Library, used by courts, law journals and universities to make citations that won't break. Individuals get a limited number of free links.
• Save Page Now on the Wayback Machine, for a public copy anyone can find later.

Keep your own copy

• SingleFile: a browser extension that saves a complete page, including images and styles, as one HTML file.
• ArchiveWeb.page: from the Webrecorder project, it records pages as you browse them, including interactive content, into standard archive files you can replay with ReplayWeb.page.
• Print to PDF: Ctrl + P → Save as PDF, simple and good enough for many records.

Your own copy is private and can't be removed by anyone else, but it's also harder to prove it wasn't edited. For evidence, use a public archive as well. See archiving a page before it's taken down.

National and specialist archives

• National libraries, such as the Library of Congress and the UK Web Archive, keep collections of their countries' websites.
• Arquivo.pt, the Portuguese web archive, offers full-text search of archived pages, which most archives don't.
• Archive-It, from the Internet Archive, is used by universities and organizations to build their own collections.

Track changes instead of hunting for them

If you want to know when a page changes, such as a price, a policy or a competitor's homepage, a change monitor like Visualping or Distill checks it on a schedule and alerts you. That's often better than looking for captures later.

Where the Wayback Machine still wins

It has by far the longest history, going back to 1996, and the most captures. Wayback Quick Access shows whether any page has a Wayback copy, opens the latest one or the full list of captures, and can save the page you're on. For more on finding removed pages, see checking for deleted pages.