Bellingcat Auto Archiver
Automates web and social media archiving for evidence preservation. Captures posts, videos, and images in a verifiable format.
What should journalists know about Bellingcat Auto Archiver?
Auto Archiver solves a real problem: social media posts get deleted, edited, or made private — often right when they become newsworthy. Bellingcat built this Python tool to automatically capture and preserve web content in a verifiable way. Feed it URLs from a CSV, Google Sheet, or command line, and it archives the content to local storage, AWS S3, or Google Drive. It handles social media posts, videos, images, and general web pages. The tool runs via Docker or pip install, with configuration through YAML files. As of April 2026, it's at v1.2.6 with 1,100+ GitHub stars, 101 forks, and active development (1,536 commits, 45 releases). The latest release added a ghost archive enricher. The real value is systematization — instead of manually screenshotting posts, you can set up automated archiving workflows that capture content with metadata intact. For evidence that might end up in court or a published investigation, verifiable archiving matters more than screenshots. The limitation: this is a technical tool that requires comfort with Python, Docker, and YAML configuration. It's not a click-and-archive browser extension. For simpler archiving needs, use Wayback Machine, archive.today, or Hunchly. Auto Archiver is for when you need industrial-scale, automated preservation.
Systematic archiving of social media evidence before deletion. Automated preservation workflows using Google Sheets as input. Building verifiable evidence archives for investigations. Capturing content from multiple platforms in a consistent format. Newsrooms that need to archive at scale.
Non-technical users who need simple one-click archiving (use archive.today or Wayback Machine). Real-time monitoring — this archives URLs you already have, not new posts as they appear. Legal-grade evidence preservation without additional chain-of-custody documentation. Archiving behind login walls or paywalls without appropriate access credentials.
Security & Privacy
Data is scrambled while being sent to their servers
Data is scrambled when stored on their servers
Where servers are located — affects which governments can request your data
Privacy policy summary
Auto Archiver is a self-hosted tool — it runs on your infrastructure and stores data where you configure it. No data is transmitted to Bellingcat or any third party (unless you configure third-party storage). The tool accesses public URLs you provide. Your archived data, your storage, your responsibility. MIT license with no telemetry or analytics.
How to protect yourself:
Run Auto Archiver on a dedicated machine or VM — archiving social media content from hostile actors could expose your IP address to the platforms being archived. Use a VPN if archiving content related to state actors or criminal networks. Store archives on encrypted storage (encrypted S3 buckets or encrypted local drives). Back up your Google Sheets input files — they contain your investigation's URL targets. If using Google Drive for storage, understand that Google can access stored content. For the highest-security archiving, use local storage with full-disk encryption. Review archived content for personally identifiable information before sharing archives with others.
Open-source (MIT license) with active development and community review. Self-hosted architecture means you control your data — nothing is sent to Bellingcat. Security posture depends entirely on your deployment: encrypted storage, VPN usage, and access controls are your responsibility. The tool itself is well-maintained (1,500+ commits, regular releases) with no known vulnerabilities in the codebase. The main risk is operational — archiving content from adversarial actors can expose your infrastructure if not properly isolated. Adequate for journalism use with appropriate deployment practices.
Who Owns This
Pricing
Free. Open source under MIT license. Self-hosted — you provide your own storage (local filesystem, AWS S3, or Google Drive).
This is an editorial assessment based on publicly available information as of 2026-04-11, using our published methodology. Independent security review is pending. Security posture can change at any time. This is not a guarantee of safety.
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