# Wayback Machine Scraper — Archive.org Snapshots & URL History (`actor-forge/wayback-snapshots`) Actor

Every Wayback Machine (archive.org) capture of a URL, folder, host or domain: timestamp, status, MIME type, digest and archive links. Unique versions, daily/yearly sampling, unique URLs, per-site summaries, optional archived page Markdown. $2 per 1,000 snapshots.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/actor-forge/wayback-snapshots.md
- **Developed by:** [ActorForge](https://apify.com/actor-forge) (community)
- **Categories:** SEO tools, Developer tools, AI
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $2.00 / 1,000 snapshots

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Wayback Machine Scraper — Archive.org Snapshots & URL History

Every Wayback Machine (archive.org) capture of a URL, folder, host or domain: timestamp, status, MIME type, digest and archive links. Unique versions, daily/yearly sampling, unique URLs, per-site summaries, optional archived page Markdown. $2 per 1,000 snapshots.

**See how any website looked in the past — every archived capture from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine (archive.org) as clean rows.** Paste URLs or domains and get the full **historical snapshots** list from the official **Wayback CDX API**: capture time, original URL, HTTP status, MIME type, size, content digest and ready-to-open **web archive** links (with and without the Wayback toolbar). Look up one page, a whole folder (`example.com/blog/*`), a host, or an entire domain with all subdomains. Cut the noise with **unique content versions** (default — only captures where the page actually changed, flagged with `changedFromPrevious`), one capture per **hour, day, month or year**, or **unique URLs** to list every page ever archived on a site — great for recovering lost content, finding old URLs for redirects, and **SEO expired domain research**. Filter by date range, HTTP status (`200`, `2xx`, `!404`) and MIME type (`text/html`, `application/pdf`, `image/*`). **Summary mode** gives one row per site with first and last capture, total captures, **captures per year**, missing years and longest gap — the quick **domain history** check before you buy a domain or vet a company. Optionally pull the **archived page content** as LLM-ready **Markdown** and text. Built for compliance and legal evidence, competitor price and copy tracking, content recovery, link building and **AI agents**. Polite by design: paced requests, automatic retries on archive.org rate limits and timeouts. **$2 per 1,000 snapshots** (the most-used Wayback actor charges $3.50), $0.004 per page summary ($0.01 for a whole-domain summary), with no compute bill on top. URLs that fail or have no captures are never charged.

### What data does it return?

Every run outputs clean, schema-validated rows like these:

| inputUrl | capturedAt | statusCode | mimeType | changedFromPrevious | archiveUrl | contentTitle |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| https://apify.com/store | 2019-07-04T11:02:25Z | 200 | text/html |  | https://web.archive.org/web/20190704110225/https://apify.com/store | Store · Apify |
| example.com | 2015-07-17T01:53:29Z | 200 | text/html | true | https://web.archive.org/web/20150717015329/http://www.example.com/ | Example Domain |
| \*.apify.com | 2023-06-10T23:36:51Z | 301 | text/html |  | https://web.archive.org/web/20230610233651/https://www.apify.com/.well-known/ai-plugin.json |  |

### How much does it cost?

Transparent pay-per-event pricing — you only pay for what you get, and the
actor **always respects your run budget**: set a maximum total charge and it
stops cleanly at the cap instead of overrunning.

| Event | Price | Charged | Worked example |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `snapshot` | $0.002 | per archived capture row delivered | Unique versions of one page over 10 years (~300 rows) = $0.60; 1,000 URLs of a domain = $2.00 |
| `url-summary` | $0.004 | per summary row for an exact URL (summary mode) | Archive history of 500 home pages = $2.00 |
| `domain-summary` | $0.01 | per summary row for a prefix, host or whole domain (scans the archive index) | Capture history of 100 entire domains = $1.00 |
| `page-content` | $0.004 | per archived page fetched as Markdown/text (only when Fetch archived page content is on) | 10 snapshots with content = $0.02 + $0.04 |
| `apify-actor-start` | $0.00005 | per run per GB of memory (platform start fee) | One run at up to 1 GB = $0.00005 (charged as one event) |

### Input options

| Field | Type | Required | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `urls` | array | yes | — | Pages, folders or domains to look up in the Wayback Machine, e.g. example.com, https://example.com/pricing. Shortcuts: example.com/blog/\* = everything under that path, *.example.com = the whole domain with subdomains. |
| `matchType` | string | no | `"exact"` | Exact: that one URL. Prefix: every URL starting with it (a folder). Host: every URL on that host name. Domain: the host and all its subdomains. Prefix/host/domain queries are slow on archive.org's side (20–40 s per index page). |
| `outputMode` | string | no | `"snapshots"` | Snapshots: one row per archived capture. Summary: one row per input — first and last capture, total captures, captures per year, missing years (charged per summary, not per capture). |
| `collapse` | string | no | `"digest"` | Busy pages are captured thousands of times with identical content. Unique versions (default) keeps a capture only when the content changed. Hourly/daily/monthly/yearly keep the first capture of each period. Unique URLs keeps one row per distinct URL (best with prefix/host/domain to list every archived page of a site). None returns every capture. |
| `from` | string | no | — | Only captures on or after this date: 2015, 201505, 20150501 or 2015-05-01. |
| `to` | string | no | — | Only captures on or before this date (the whole period is included: 2018 means up to 31 Dec 2018). |
| `statusFilter` | string | no | — | Only captures with these HTTP status codes, comma-separated: 200, 2xx, 200,301 — or exclude with !404, !5xx. Empty = all (includes redirects and errors). |
| `mimeFilter` | string | no | — | Only captures of these content types: text/html, application/pdf, image/* — or exclude with !image/\*. Empty = all. |
| `newestFirst` | boolean | no | `false` | Exact URLs only: return the most recent captures (up to the max per URL) newest first, instead of the oldest first. |
| `maxSnapshotsPerUrl` | integer | no | `1000` | Stop after this many snapshot rows for each input. Each row is charged, so this is also your cost cap per URL. |
| `fetchContent` | boolean | no | `false` | Download the archived HTML of snapshots and add the page title and main content as Markdown/text (charged per page, see pricing). Only HTML captures with status 200 are fetched. |
| `maxContentPages` | integer | no | `10` | Fetch content for at most this many snapshots in the run (the first ones delivered). Failed fetches don't count. |
| `contentFormat` | string | no | `"markdown"` | What to include when fetching content. |
| `maxIndexPagesPerUrl` | integer | no | `10` | Prefix, host and domain queries walk archive.org's index page by page (each ~3,000–7,000 captures, 20–40 s). Stop after this many pages per input, even if fewer snapshots than the max were found (e.g. with tight filters on a huge site). |
| `proxyConfiguration` | object | no | `{"useApifyProxy":false}` | Not needed normally — archive.org's CDX API is public. Turn on Apify Proxy only if your runs keep hitting rate limits. |

### Limits & honest notes

- Data comes from the Internet Archive's public Wayback CDX API. Captures the archive doesn't have (never crawled, excluded by the site owner, or very recent) can't be returned; such inputs get a free row saying so.
- archive.org is a non-profit and sometimes slow: exact-URL lookups take about a second, but prefix/host/domain lookups take 20–40 s per index page (each page covers several thousand captures). The actor paces its requests (about one per second, two URLs in parallel) and retries rate limits (HTTP 429), server errors and timeouts with backoff; a URL that still fails gets a free error row.
- Prefix/host/domain results come in URL order (then time), not purely by date. Newest-first is available for exact URLs only. These queries stop after 10 index pages per input by default (raise Max index pages to go deeper). On multi-URL results, collapsing works per URL: "one per day" keeps one capture per day for each URL.
- Unique-versions mode compares each capture with the previous one (archive.org's digest collapse), so a page that changes back to an earlier version shows up again — that is a real change.
- Summary counts for exact URLs come from the Wayback Machine's capture calendar (all captures, monthly precision for date ranges). With status/MIME filters, or for prefix/host/domain, they are counted from the index (up to 100,000 captures or the index page cap; scanComplete says whether the count is complete).
- Archived page content is extracted from the raw capture as archived; pages that were built by JavaScript may come out nearly empty, and images/CSS are not downloaded. Content is fetched only for HTML captures with HTTP 200 and is capped at 200,000 characters.
- Respects your run budget: set a maximum total charge and the run stops cleanly at the cap, with no row charged twice.

### Related ActorForge actors

- [Website Change Monitor](https://apify.com/actor-forge/website-change-monitor) — track changes from now on
- [Domain WHOIS & DNS Lookup](https://apify.com/actor-forge/domain-lookup)
- [Website to Markdown](https://apify.com/actor-forge/website-to-markdown)
- [SEO Audit Crawler](https://apify.com/actor-forge/seo-audit)

### Changelog

- **2026-10-19** — Initial release: Wayback CDX snapshots for exact/prefix/host/domain, unique versions and time/URL collapsing, status/MIME/date filters, change flags, per-site summary mode, optional archived page content as Markdown.

***

*Built and maintained by **ActorForge**. Reliability first: every actor in the
portfolio is monitored by an automated nightly self-test, and breakages are
typically fixed the same day.*

# Actor input Schema

## `urls` (type: `array`):

Pages, folders or domains to look up in the Wayback Machine, e.g. example.com, https://example.com/pricing. Shortcuts: example.com/blog/\* = everything under that path, \*.example.com = the whole domain with subdomains.

## `matchType` (type: `string`):

Exact: that one URL. Prefix: every URL starting with it (a folder). Host: every URL on that host name. Domain: the host and all its subdomains. Prefix/host/domain queries are slow on archive.org's side (20–40 s per index page).

## `outputMode` (type: `string`):

Snapshots: one row per archived capture. Summary: one row per input — first and last capture, total captures, captures per year, missing years (charged per summary, not per capture).

## `collapse` (type: `string`):

Busy pages are captured thousands of times with identical content. Unique versions (default) keeps a capture only when the content changed. Hourly/daily/monthly/yearly keep the first capture of each period. Unique URLs keeps one row per distinct URL (best with prefix/host/domain to list every archived page of a site). None returns every capture.

## `from` (type: `string`):

Only captures on or after this date: 2015, 201505, 20150501 or 2015-05-01.

## `to` (type: `string`):

Only captures on or before this date (the whole period is included: 2018 means up to 31 Dec 2018).

## `statusFilter` (type: `string`):

Only captures with these HTTP status codes, comma-separated: 200, 2xx, 200,301 — or exclude with !404, !5xx. Empty = all (includes redirects and errors).

## `mimeFilter` (type: `string`):

Only captures of these content types: text/html, application/pdf, image/\* — or exclude with !image/\*. Empty = all.

## `newestFirst` (type: `boolean`):

Exact URLs only: return the most recent captures (up to the max per URL) newest first, instead of the oldest first.

## `maxSnapshotsPerUrl` (type: `integer`):

Stop after this many snapshot rows for each input. Each row is charged, so this is also your cost cap per URL.

## `fetchContent` (type: `boolean`):

Download the archived HTML of snapshots and add the page title and main content as Markdown/text (charged per page, see pricing). Only HTML captures with status 200 are fetched.

## `maxContentPages` (type: `integer`):

Fetch content for at most this many snapshots in the run (the first ones delivered). Failed fetches don't count.

## `contentFormat` (type: `string`):

What to include when fetching content.

## `maxIndexPagesPerUrl` (type: `integer`):

Prefix, host and domain queries walk archive.org's index page by page (each ~3,000–7,000 captures, 20–40 s). Stop after this many pages per input, even if fewer snapshots than the max were found (e.g. with tight filters on a huge site).

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Not needed normally — archive.org's CDX API is public. Turn on Apify Proxy only if your runs keep hitting rate limits.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "urls": [
    "https://apify.com/pricing"
  ],
  "matchType": "exact",
  "outputMode": "snapshots",
  "collapse": "digest",
  "newestFirst": false,
  "maxSnapshotsPerUrl": 1000,
  "fetchContent": false,
  "maxContentPages": 10,
  "contentFormat": "markdown",
  "maxIndexPagesPerUrl": 10,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `snapshots` (type: `string`):

One row per archived capture with timestamp, status, MIME type, digest, Wayback links and optional page content.

## `summary` (type: `string`):

Summary mode: one row per input URL with first/last capture, total and yearly capture counts.

## `runSummary` (type: `string`):

Rows delivered per URL, index pages scanned, archive.org request statistics and charged events.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "urls": [
        "https://apify.com/pricing"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("actor-forge/wayback-snapshots").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "urls": ["https://apify.com/pricing"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("actor-forge/wayback-snapshots").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "urls": [
    "https://apify.com/pricing"
  ]
}' |
apify call actor-forge/wayback-snapshots --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,actor-forge/wayback-snapshots"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/Ymb8taIHqSWFW11nw/builds/7SP4Zt5lupMh3qzMF/openapi.json