Wayback Machine

The Wayback Machine is the Internet Archive’s public web archive. You paste a URL. You get a calendar of snapshots, if any exist, and you can open one. You can also ask it to save the page that is live right now (Save Page Now), which is the habit that turns a disappearing post into something you can cite later.

It is free. There is an API. There is no account required for ordinary lookups. Coverage is wide and uneven. Some sites are archived constantly. Some block the crawler. Some snapshots are a broken shell because the page was a pile of JavaScript.

How I use it

Before I believe a page is gone. Before I believe a page never said what a screenshot claims. After a company rewrites its about page. After a profile is deleted and I want the old bio, the old photo, the old outbound links.

I save first and read second. If the page is still up and I care about it, I archive it myself rather than hoping a crawl already passed.

Next to archive.today

Wayback is the long timeline. archive.today is the “capture this rendered page right now” button, and it is often better at JavaScript-heavy sites and at giving you a short, permanent link. I use both. I do not pick a favorite on principle. I pick the one that has the snapshot I need.

This is public infrastructure, like a library. Everyone should know it. The Gem list is for tools I pay for to save an hour. Wayback already saved the hour, for free, by existing.