Wayback Machine Scraper — Snapshots · No Login · Cheap

List every snapshot the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine holds for one or more URLs: timestamp, snapshot URL, HTTP status code, MIME type, content length and digest. No login, no API key from the Internet Archive, and no browser automation needed on your side.

Why use this scraper

The Wayback Machine's own CDX API is public but returns raw, undocumented rows that need parsing and date-range logic before they're usable, and most teams that need this data (OSINT researchers, brand monitors, legal and compliance teams checking what a site said on a given date) just want a clean list of snapshots per URL, not a CDX query language to learn.

This actor wraps that lookup: give it one or more URLs and, optionally, a date range, and get back one structured JSON record per archived snapshot, ready to filter, sort or join with your own data.

Overview

Input is one or more URLs plus optional from/to date filters and a cap on snapshots per URL. The actor queries the Wayback Machine for each URL and returns one JSON record per archived snapshot: the input URL, the snapshot's timestamp, its full web.archive.org snapshot URL, the original URL at that point in time, HTTP status code, MIME type, content length and digest (useful for spotting when a page's content actually changed versus when it was merely re-crawled). A lookup of two URLs with 50 snapshots each typically finishes in a few seconds.

Supported inputs

• URLs (urls) — one or more URLs to look up, e.g. apify.com or https://www.example.com/page.
• Date range (from/to) — optional start and end dates in YYYY or YYYYMMDD format to filter snapshots to a window; leave blank to get the full archive history.
• Max snapshots per URL (maxSnapshotsPerUrl) — caps how many snapshots are listed per URL (default 50, up to 1,000), so a long-lived domain with thousands of captures doesn't run away on its own.
• Debug logs — optional verbose logging for troubleshooting a run.

Use cases

• OSINT and investigative research — reconstruct what a website said at a specific point in time, and track exactly when its content changed using the digest field.
• Brand and competitor monitoring — check how often and when a competitor's site, pricing page or terms page has changed over months or years.
• Legal and compliance teams — pull a date-stamped snapshot list as evidence of what a page published and when, ahead of a dispute or audit.
• Content recovery — find an old snapshot of a page that has since been taken down or redesigned, to recover text, structure or historical claims.
• SEO and content history audits — see how many times a page has been crawled and archived over its lifetime as a rough proxy for how actively it changed.

How it works

The actor queries the Wayback Machine's own public snapshot index for each input URL and returns the matching capture records, respecting the optional date range and per-URL cap. Because this reads the Internet Archive's own public lookup rather than scraping rendered pages, there is no target-site anti-bot system to work around, and no login or API key from the Internet Archive is required.

Input configuration

Single URL, default range:

{
  "urls": ["apify.com"],
  "maxSnapshotsPerUrl": 50
}

Multiple URLs with a date range:

{
  "urls": ["apify.com", "google.com"],
  "from": "2020",
  "to": "2023",
  "maxSnapshotsPerUrl": 100
}

Full history, high cap for a long-lived domain:

{
  "urls": ["wikipedia.org"],
  "maxSnapshotsPerUrl": 500,
  "debug": false
}

Output sample

Real output from a live run:

[
  {
    "url": "apify.com",
    "timestamp": "20070531101538",
    "snapshotUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20070531101538/http://www.apify.com:80/",
    "originalUrl": "http://www.apify.com:80/",
    "statusCode": "200",
    "mimeType": "text/html",
    "digest": "EE6FCHP3MKBC3EV5D5Q4WQJNZNVUTNU6",
    "length": 1013
  },
  {
    "url": "apify.com",
    "timestamp": "20110210025321",
    "snapshotUrl": "https://web.archive.org/web/20110210025321/http://apify.com/",
    "originalUrl": "http://apify.com/",
    "statusCode": "200",
    "mimeType": "text/html",
    "digest": "YW37QD7ORZTIPSZS3TXWLLEG5APRIPB3",
    "length": 2801
  }
]

Key output fields

Field	Type	Description
url	string	The input URL this snapshot belongs to
timestamp	string	Capture timestamp in YYYYMMDDhhmmss format
snapshotUrl	string	Direct web.archive.org URL to view this exact snapshot
originalUrl	string	The original URL as captured at that point in time (protocol and www can vary across captures)
statusCode	string	HTTP status code the Wayback Machine recorded for the capture
mimeType	string	MIME type of the captured resource
digest	string	Content hash of the capture; identical digests across captures mean the content did not change between those crawls
length	number	Content length in bytes of the captured resource

Pricing

Pay-per-event, charged only for snapshots actually returned:

Event	Price
Actor start	$0.00005 (one-time per run, scales with memory)
Snapshot scraped	$0.001 per snapshot

At $0.001/snapshot, 1,000 snapshots cost about $1.00 plus the one-time start fee. Errors and empty lookups are not charged.

What makes this richer than the competition

ryanclinton/wayback-machine-search, the highest-traffic Wayback Machine actor on the Store, charges $0.0035 per snapshot on its Free tier, nearly 3.5 times this actor's flat $0.001, dropping only to $0.00063 at its top Diamond tier; a Free or Bronze-tier buyer, which is most buyers trying the category, pays substantially more there than this actor's single flat rate regardless of plan. andok/wayback-machine-scraper, the other established actor in the category, does not publish a fixed per-event number in its listing, which makes this actor's transparent $0.001/snapshot easier to budget against up front.

Notes & limitations

• The Wayback Machine itself sometimes records the exact same timestamp more than once for a URL (seen in the sample above for google.com); this is the Internet Archive's own index, not duplication introduced by the actor.
• statusCode reflects what the Wayback Machine recorded at crawl time; a page that returned an error when the Internet Archive's crawler visited it will show that error code here, not a successful one.
• Very old captures (pre-2000) can have minimal length and sparse metadata because the Internet Archive's own crawling and indexing were less thorough in its early years; this is a limitation of the source archive, not the actor.
• The actor lists snapshot metadata only; it does not download or render the archived page's HTML content itself. Use the snapshotUrl to open or separately fetch the archived page if you need its content.
• A URL with no snapshots in the Wayback Machine (never crawled, or blocked by the site's historical robots.txt) returns zero records for that URL; this reflects the archive's own coverage, not an actor failure.
• from/to date filters narrow by the Wayback Machine's own index granularity; a filter narrower than any available snapshot simply returns no results for that URL.

FAQ

Does this need a Wayback Machine or Internet Archive account? No. The actor queries the Internet Archive's public snapshot index, which requires no account or API key.

Can I get the full HTML content of a snapshot, not just its metadata? Not directly from this actor; use the returned snapshotUrl to open or fetch the archived page separately.

Why do I see two records with the exact same timestamp? The Wayback Machine's own index occasionally lists the same capture twice; this is the source archive's behavior, not an actor artifact.

Can I look up more than one URL in the same run? Yes, list as many URLs as you need in the urls array; each is queried and returned separately.

What date format does from/to expect? Either a 4-digit year ("2023") or a full date ("20230115"); leave both blank for the complete archive history.

Does the price change based on my Apify plan? No. This actor charges a flat $0.001 per snapshot regardless of your Apify plan tier, unlike the category leader whose price depends heavily on plan tier.

Can I schedule this to run automatically? Yes, use Apify's built-in Scheduler to re-check a set of URLs periodically and track when new snapshots appear.

For AI Agents & LLM Apps

This actor is available over the Apify MCP server (mcp.apify.com) for direct use from Claude, Cursor or any MCP-compatible agent, and over the plain REST API for scripted pipelines.

Synchronous call that returns dataset items directly, no polling required:

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/gio21~wayback-machine-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"urls": ["apify.com"], "maxSnapshotsPerUrl": 50}'

A single URL with the default maxSnapshotsPerUrl of 50 is the sweet spot for a quick history check; raise it for a domain you know has thousands of captures.

Disclaimer

This actor is an independent tool that reads publicly available Internet Archive Wayback Machine data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by the Internet Archive. "Wayback Machine" is a trademark of the Internet Archive. Use it in line with the Internet Archive's own terms and any applicable data protection law in your jurisdiction.

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