Wayback Machine Scraper - URL Snapshot History

Get the full Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) snapshot history for any URL: every capture timestamp, snapshot link, HTTP status, MIME type, content digest and size. Filter by date range and match type (exact page, prefix, host, or whole domain). No API key, no browser.

What you get per snapshot

Field	Meaning
originalUrl / target	The archived URL and the query it came from
timestamp / capturedAt	Capture time (raw YYYYMMDDhhmmss and ISO)
snapshotUrl	Direct link to the archived copy
statusCode / mimeType	HTTP status and content type at capture
digest / length	Content digest (to spot changes) and byte size

Input

{ "urls": ["example.com"], "matchType": "domain", "fromDate": "20200101", "maxSnapshotsPerUrl": 500 }

• URLs - one per line. Match type: exact, prefix (path), host, or domain (host + subdomains).
• Date range - fromDate / toDate as YYYYMMDD. Collapse duplicates - keep only distinct content versions.
• Import from a file - paste a list, or link a public .txt/.csv, a Google Sheet/Drive link, or an Apify key-value-store record.
• Output fields - trim every record to exactly the columns you need.

Leave everything empty and the run returns a small free sample so you can see the shape first.

Reliability

Reads the official Internet Archive CDX API with patient backoff. A URL with no snapshots, or an import that cannot be read, bills $0 and says why.

Honest limits

• The CDX API is slow and rate-limits by IP. Heavily-archived URLs (major domains) can take tens of seconds, and very large domain queries may hit archive.org's rate limit - if a URL comes back empty with a "did not respond" note, space out the run or narrow the URL and re-run. You are never charged for a failed lookup.
• domain/host matches can return very large result sets - raise the run memory and timeout for those.

Pricing

$0.0005 per snapshot on the FREE tier (tiered pricing lowers it with volume) - priced low because snapshot counts are high per URL. Only snapshots actually saved are billed; empty and failed lookups cost nothing.

Output views

• Snapshots - original URL, captured date, snapshot link, status, MIME and size.

Use with AI assistants (MCP)

Available through the Apify MCP server - an agent can pull a URL's capture history, find when a page changed, or recover the last-archived version in one call.

Agent-ready: autonomous payments (x402 & Skyfire)

This actor is agent-ready - AI agents can discover it, run it, and pay for it autonomously, with no Apify account and no human in the loop. It uses pay-per-event pricing and limited permissions, so it qualifies for Apify's agentic-payment standards:

• x402 - an open, HTTP-native payment protocol. Agents pay per run in USDC on the Base network directly through the Apify MCP server - no account, no API key.
• Skyfire - agent-to-service payments for fully autonomous AI-agent workflows.

Building an AI agent, MCP tool, or autonomous data pipeline? This scraper is ready to plug in and pay as it goes.