Wayback Machine Scraper: Archived URLs & Snapshot History

Query the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine CDX index at scale. Get every archived URL of a domain (or a host, a path prefix or a single page) and the full capture history of a page, with capture date, HTTP status, MIME type, content digest and a direct web.archive.org snapshot link.

• Who it's for: SEO site migrations and redirect maps, recovering lost pages, competitor history, OSINT and research.
• Source: the Internet Archive's public CDX API, queried politely (one request at a time). No API key, no login; capture metadata only, no page content copied.
• Filters: date range, HTTP status, MIME type, collapse by URL, day, month or content.
• Output: JSON, CSV or Excel; pay per capture returned (see the Pricing tab).

Quick start (one click)

Open the Actor and press Start: the form is prefilled with this input.

{
  "urls": [
    "apify.com"
  ],
  "maxResults": 20
}

Sample output (one row, more fields in the dataset):

target	url	timestamp	capturedAt	statusCode
example.com	https://www.example.com/	20200101213728	2020-01-01T21:37:28Z	200

Use cases

Redirect map after a site migration. List every URL the old site ever had, once each, then map them to new URLs.

{"urls": ["example.com"], "matchType": "domain", "collapse": "url", "maxResults": 5000}

Track changes to a competitor's pricing page. One capture per month, skipping captures whose content did not change.

{"urls": ["https://example.com/pricing"], "matchType": "exact", "collapse": "month", "from": "2022"}

Find lost PDFs and dead pages. Archived PDFs of a site, or pages that returned 404.

{"urls": ["example.com"], "matchType": "domain", "mimeType": "application/pdf", "collapse": "url"}

Domain age check. The first capture date is a good proxy for how long a site has existed.

{"urls": ["example.com"], "matchType": "exact", "maxResults": 1}

What can you do with it?

• Archived URL extraction: list every URL of a domain the Wayback Machine has seen (matchType: domain, collapse: url). Useful for SEO audits, finding dead pages and redirect mapping after a migration, recovering lost content, and security reconnaissance on your own assets.
• Page history: every capture of one page over time, or one per day/month/year, to track pricing, terms-of-service or competitor page changes.
• Content-change detection: collapse: content skips captures whose content didn't change.
• Find files: filter by MIME type (application/pdf, image/jpeg) or HTTP status (200, 404, 3..).
• Domain age: the first capture date is a good proxy for how long a site has existed.

Input example

{"urls": ["example.com"], "matchType": "exact", "collapse": "content", "statusCode": "200", "from": "2020", "maxResults": 100}

Output example (real row, cloud run dvlsfgXGp0w8sPgkb)

{"target": "example.com", "url": "https://www.example.com/", "timestamp": "20200101213728", "capturedAt": "2020-01-01T21:37:28Z", "archiveUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200101213728/https://www.example.com/", "statusCode": "200", "mimeType": "text/html", "digest": "JI6OR3QR4CI526JD6TMMNZNV4QPMPQCH", "length": 1248}

Honest limits

• Domain-wide searches of very large sites can time out on the Internet Archive's side (its CDX server answers HTTP 504 after about 60 s, e.g. matchType: domain on a big domain). The actor retries with backoff and stops cleanly before your run timeout with a clear message; nothing is charged per capture if nothing came back. Use exact or prefix, or add from/to, for big sites.
• Capture metadata only, not page content.
• Domain-wide and prefix queries on big sites are slow because the Internet Archive's CDX API is rate-limited; use from/to, collapse and maxResults, or give the run a longer timeout.
• If the Archive returns HTTP 429 or is down, the run backs off and stops with a clear message.

How much does it cost?

Pay per result: $0.002 per capture row plus a small start fee. 10,000 archived URLs cost about $20, and you can cap spend with maxResults. No subscription.

Fair use of the Internet Archive

The actor uses the public CDX API as documented by the Internet Archive and is deliberately polite: one request at a time, at least 2 seconds apart, large pages with resume keys (so fewer requests), automatic back-off on HTTP 429, and a descriptive User-Agent. It returns capture metadata only: it does not download or republish archived page content. Archived pages stay on web.archive.org; respect the rights of the original site owners when you open them. Consider donating to the Internet Archive if it is useful to you.

FAQ

Why fewer results than the Wayback website shows? Filters, the date range and collapse reduce rows; very recent captures can take time to be indexed.

Why is a domain-wide query slow? Domain/prefix queries with filters or dedupe are scanned server-side by the Internet Archive and can take a minute or more per page; the actor logs each page.

Can it get the page text? No, by design. Open archiveUrl to view a capture.

Can I run it on a schedule? Yes, through Apify schedules, the API, Make, Zapier or Google Sheets.

Use it from code, AI agents and automations

The same input as the form above works everywhere. Results are the run's dataset (JSON, CSV, Excel). You need an Apify API token (Console → Settings → API & Integrations).

Python (pip install apify-client)

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("stazis/wayback-snapshots-api").call(run_input={
  "urls": [
    "apify.com"
  ],
  "maxResults": 20
})
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():  # apify-client < 3: run["defaultDatasetId"]
    print(item)

JavaScript / TypeScript (npm i apify-client)

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('stazis/wayback-snapshots-api').call({
  "urls": [
    "apify.com"
  ],
  "maxResults": 20
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

HTTP, one call (waits for the run, up to 5 minutes, and returns the items)

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/stazis~wayback-snapshots-api/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"urls": ["apify.com"], "maxResults": 20}'

AI agents (MCP). This Actor runs with limited permissions, so AI agents can use it through the hosted Apify MCP server (Claude, Cursor, VS Code, Codex and other MCP clients). Add this to your MCP client config and sign in with Apify on first use:

{ "mcpServers": { "wayback-snapshots-api": { "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=stazis/wayback-snapshots-api" } } }

Agents without an Apify account can pay per run in USDC through agi.apify.com (x402). Pricing is pay-per-event, so an agent pays only for the results it gets.

LangChain (pip install langchain-apify, set APIFY_TOKEN): from langchain_apify import ApifyActorsTool and tool = ApifyActorsTool("stazis/wayback-snapshots-api") gives your agent this Actor as a tool.

No-code and scheduling: use the Apify app in Make, n8n or Zapier ("Run an Actor", then pick stazis/wayback-snapshots-api), or create a Schedule in Apify Console to run it daily and send results to a webhook, Slack or Google Drive through Apify integrations.

Related actors by stazis

Domain RDAP/WHOIS API, VIN Decoder API, SEC EDGAR Filings API, OpenAlex API.