Tools · SPBoucher
Menu

ArchiveBox

by ArchiveBox (Nick Sweeting and contributors) · Application

Self-hosted, open-source web archiving tool that saves URLs as HTML, PDF, screenshot, WARC, readable text and media snapshots with a web UI and CLI

MIT licenseOpen sourceFreeSelf-hostedLocalSelf-hostable
Visit official site Compare

Link verified Nov 2, 2026

Overview

ArchiveBox is an open-source (MIT) self-hosted web archiver. Given URLs, whether typed one at a time, imported from browser bookmarks and history, RSS feeds, Pocket or Pinboard exports, or pushed by a browser extension, it runs a set of extractors against each page and stores the results as plain files in a per-snapshot folder: the original HTML and a SingleFile bundle, a PDF and PNG screenshot and DOM dump from headless Chrome, a wget mirror with WARC, article text via Readability and Mercury, media downloaded with yt-dlp, git clones of repository links, plus favicon, headers and a link to the archive.org capture.

It installs with Docker Compose (recommended), pip or uv, and provides a Django-based web interface with admin and public views, a CLI for adding, listing and scheduling, a REST API and direct access to the SQLite index. It appeals to researchers and individuals who want a durable personal or institutional archive they fully control, independent of the Internet Archive.

Caveats: current releases are pre-release builds of a major rewrite, extractors depend on external binaries such as Chrome, wget and yt-dlp, archiving authenticated content carries security trade-offs, and it is a single-node tool rather than a large-scale crawler.

Capabilities

  • Multi-format snapshots: HTML, SingleFile, PDF, screenshot, DOM, WARC
  • Readable text extraction and media download
  • Imports from bookmarks, history, RSS, Pocket and Pinboard
  • Web UI, CLI, REST API and SQLite index
  • Scheduled re-archiving
  • Docker, pip and uv installation

Typical workflows

  1. Archive every bookmark automatically from a browser extension
  2. Preserve sources cited in a paper with full-page captures
  3. Run a shared departmental archive on a Mac mini or server

Strengths

  • Files on disk in open formats; no lock-in
  • MIT license and active development
  • Many capture methods per URL

Limitations

  • Current versions are pre-release
  • Depends on external binaries
  • Single-node; not a web-scale crawler
  • Security caveats for logged-in archiving

Prerequisites

  • Docker or Python 3.10 or newer
  • Chrome, wget and yt-dlp for full extractor coverage

Who it is for

  • Researchers preserving sources
  • Self-hosters building personal archives
  • Small institutions

Alternatives & comparison

  • Browsertrix

    Webrecorder's browser-based web archiving system, available hosted or self-hosted, that crawls sites with real browsers into signed WACZ files replayable with ReplayWeb.page

    Open sourcePaid
  • Wayback Machine

    The Internet Archive's public web archive for browsing historical snapshots of web pages, with Save Page Now, Availability, CDX and Memento APIs

    ProprietaryFree
Compare ArchiveBox with its alternatives →

Sources & verification

Primary sources consulted for this record. Claims are tied to the fields each source supports; the automated link checker re-verifies every URL on a schedule.

Confidence
High
Reviewed
Nov 1, 2026
Links
Verified · Nov 2, 2026

Spotted an error?

Broken link, outdated license, wrong category, or a tool that no longer exists? Tell us; reports are reviewed by the editor.

Common Crawl

Common Crawl Foundation · Web archiving

Nonprofit open repository of petabyte-scale web crawl data since 2008, published as WARC, WAT and WET files on AWS Open Data with URL and columnar indexes

MixedFreeNov 2, 2026