Wayback Machine Snapshots

What does Wayback Machine Snapshots do?

Wayback Machine Snapshots lists the captures the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine holds of a page, a section or a whole website. For each capture you get the date, the HTTP status the page answered with, the content type, a fingerprint of the content, and the address to open the capture in the Wayback Machine. Export the list to Excel, CSV or JSON, or use it in your own tools.

• Look up one page, everything under an address (such as /blog/), a whole host, or a domain with all its subdomains
• Every capture, or one per day, month or year, or only the captures where the content changed
• Limit to a period, to working pages (status 200) and to web pages only
• Oldest first, or the newest captures first
• Many addresses in one run

What data do you get?

Field	Example
Captured	2022-08-04T21:57:09Z
Address	https://crawlee.dev/
Status	200
Type	text/html
Open in Wayback Machine	https://web.archive.org/web/20220804215709/https://crawlee.dev/
Digest	a fingerprint: the same digest means the same content
Size	9419 bytes (as stored, compressed)

How to find old versions of a website

1. Under Websites or pages, enter the site or page, for example example.com.
2. Under What to look up, choose a single address, a section, the whole host or the whole domain.
3. Under Which captures, choose One per year for an overview, Only when the content changed to see each version once, or Every capture.
4. Press Start, then open any capture with its Wayback Machine address.

How much does it cost?

You pay for results, not for time: $1.00 per 1,000 snapshots. Apify subscribers on the Silver plan pay $0.85 and on the Gold plan $0.70 per 1,000 snapshots. Each run also has a start fee of $0.00005.

Snapshots returned	Cost
100	$0.10
1,000	$1.00
10,000	$10.00
100,000	$100.00

Apify's free plan includes $5 of credit each month, which covers about 5,000 snapshots. Set Maximum snapshots per address, or a maximum cost for the run in Apify Console, and the tool stops there and keeps what it has found.

Input

The only required field is Websites or pages. The other options:

• What to look up: this address only; this address and everything under it; every page of this host; this domain and its subdomains.
• Which captures: every capture; one per day, month or year; only when the content changed.
• From and To: a year (2019), a month (2019-06) or a day (2019-06-30).
• Maximum snapshots per address and Newest first.
• Only working captures (on by default) and Only web pages under Filters.

Output example

{
    "url": "https://crawlee.dev/",
    "capturedAt": "2022-08-04T21:57:09Z",
    "timestamp": "20220804215709",
    "waybackUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20220804215709/https://crawlee.dev/",
    "statusCode": 200,
    "mimeType": "text/html",
    "digest": "QFA2FSCB5FSJWSQAVAU227TULSXFA6QC",
    "length": 9419,
    "source": "https://crawlee.dev/",
    "error": null
}

When nothing matches, the table has one row for the address with the error NOT_ARCHIVED. If the Internet Archive cannot be reached, the row says ARCHIVE_ERROR or the network error.

What can you use it for?

• Find out how old a website is: its first capture
• See how a competitor's pricing page, home page or terms changed over time
• Recover the addresses of pages that no longer exist, for redirects after a site move
• Check what a domain was used for before you buy it
• Collect evidence of what a page said on a given date
• Build lists of a site's historic pages for research

Use it from the API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/cyber1nj3ct0r~wayback-machine-snapshots/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"urls": [{"url": "example.com"}], "matchType": "host", "collapse": "year"}'

The same works from Python, JavaScript, Make, Zapier and n8n through Apify's integrations.

FAQ

Why is it slower than other tools?

The Internet Archive is a free public library. The tool asks its public capture index one request at a time, at least a second apart, and waits patiently when the index is busy, so that it never adds to the Archive's load. Large sites with many captures can take a few minutes.

Does it download the pages themselves?

No. It returns the list of captures and the address to open each one in the Wayback Machine. Open any of them in your browser to see the page as it was.

Why are some sizes or statuses empty?

Some entries in the index are "revisits": the Archive saw the same content again and did not store it twice. They carry no status or size of their own.

Why did a site I know return nothing?

The Archive may not have captured it, or the site asked the Archive to remove or hide its captures. Try Every page of this host and turn off Only working captures: the home page is sometimes stored under a slightly different address.

Is it allowed?

The tool uses the Internet Archive's public capture index, the way the Wayback Machine's own pages do, and at a gentle pace. The captured pages belong to their owners: you are responsible for how you use them.

Something does not work

Open an issue on the Issues tab with the address you tried. Every report is read and answered.