Wayback Machine Domain History & Archived URLs

⏸ Temporarily paused (since 13 Oct 2026). We are asking the Internet Archive for permission for this use of Wayback Machine data. Until then, runs exit immediately with the message "Temporarily paused pending data-source permission", fetch nothing from archive.org and charge nothing. Please don't schedule runs for now.

Find out how old a website really is and how it has changed, from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. For each domain or URL you get a clean history report, and optionally the list of snapshots and every archived URL ever seen on the domain.

Built on the official Wayback CDX API and deliberately polite: at most 30 requests per minute, with a full 60-second pause after any rate-limit signal. The Internet Archive is a non-profit; this Actor treats it like one.

What you get

Domain history report (one per target):

• firstSeen / lastSeen: first and latest capture in the archive
• yearsActive, monthsWithCaptures, capturesByYear
• statusCodes: how often the site answered 200, redirects (301/302) or errors
• contentChanges: how many times the homepage content changed (month to month)
• longestGapMonths + gaps[]: periods when the site disappeared from the archive (a classic sign of an expired or dropped domain)
• redirectsSeen, firstSnapshotUrl, lastSnapshotUrl: one-click links to the archived pages

Snapshots (optional): individual captures with timestamp, status, MIME type, size, content digest and a direct Wayback link. By default only captures where the content actually changed.

Archived URLs (optional): distinct URLs ever captured on the domain and its subdomains, with the date first captured. HTML pages only by default.

Use cases

• Domain due diligence: before buying an expired or aftermarket domain, check its age, gaps and past use
• SEO and site migrations: recover old URLs to set up 301 redirects and reclaim lost backlinks
• Brand and competitor research: see when a competitor launched, rebranded or changed pricing pages
• Fraud and KYB checks: a "company website" that first appeared three weeks ago is a red flag
• Bulk enrichment: add website age to lead lists

Input example

{
  "targets": ["lunar.app", "https://www.tibber.com/"],
  "domainReport": true,
  "snapshots": true,
  "maxSnapshotsPerTarget": 50,
  "archivedUrls": true,
  "maxUrlsPerTarget": 500,
  "fromYear": 2015
}

Output example (report)

{
  "type": "domainReport",
  "target": "lunar.app",
  "archived": true,
  "firstSeen": "2020-03-27T13:18:55+00:00",
  "lastSeen": "2026-10-02T13:08:17+00:00",
  "yearsActive": 7,
  "monthsWithCaptures": 68,
  "capturesByYear": {"2020": 9, "2021": 6, "2022": 12, "2023": 10, "2024": 11, "2025": 12, "2026": 8},
  "statusCodes": {"200": 3, "301": 11, "302": 13, "307": 24, "308": 9},
  "contentChanges": 2,
  "longestGapMonths": 3,
  "firstSnapshotUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200327131855/https://lunar.app/"
}

Each item has a type (domainReport, snapshot, archivedUrl, error); the dataset has two ready-made views. See sample_output.json.

Pricing

• $0.01 per domain report
• $0.001 per snapshot or archived-URL record ($1 per 1,000)

Targets that the Internet Archive fails to answer produce a free error item. Use the run's maximum cost setting to cap spending; the Actor stops cleanly at your limit.

Speed and limits

To respect the Internet Archive, the Actor makes at most 0.5 requests per second (one report ≈ 2 requests). The archive is sometimes slow or briefly unavailable; the Actor retries with backoff. Expect roughly 15–25 domain reports per minute when the archive is healthy, and slower when it isn't. Large URL lists are fetched in one request per target (up to your max).

Notes

Data comes from the Internet Archive's public Wayback CDX API. The Internet Archive's terms describe access as being for research and scholarship. Use the results accordingly, and support the Archive at https://archive.org/donate. This Actor is not affiliated with the Internet Archive.

Privacy: personal contact data is removed

Every output item is passed through a sanitiser before it is saved. Email addresses and phone numbers anywhere in any text field (title, description, HTML, location, URLs, errors…) are replaced with [redacted], and contact-person, recruiter and hiring-manager fields are dropped. Names introduced as a contact ("Your contact: …", "Ansprechpartnerin: …") are also redacted. The output contains organisation-level data only and is not meant for contacting individuals.