Wayback Machine
Access archived versions of web pages going back to 1996. Over 1 trillion pages captured.
What should journalists know about Wayback Machine?
The Wayback Machine is irreplaceable infrastructure for accountability journalism. When the Trump administration quietly removed pages from federal websites in early 2025, the Wayback Machine caught it all — journalists pulled archived .gov pages and showed exactly what text disappeared and when. When a company deletes a press release, when a politician edits a statement, when a government agency scrubs data — the Wayback Machine probably has it. Hit 1 trillion archived pages in October 2025. Nothing else comes close to that depth. But the tool is under siege from multiple directions: a 31-million-user data breach in October 2024, DOGE-driven federal funding cuts in 2025, and 241+ news publishers now blocking its crawlers over AI scraping fears. Use it while it's still comprehensive — and always pair it with archive.today for redundancy.
Proving what a website said on a specific date. Recovering deleted government pages, corporate statements, or news articles. Documenting changes over time. Tracking disinformation networks through archived site analytics codes. Verifying or debunking claims about domain ownership and website history.
Real-time archiving of pages you're browsing now (use Hunchly or archive.today for on-demand captures). Guaranteed completeness — coverage of news homepages dropped 87% between May and October 2025 due to crawling breakdowns. Pages excluded by robots.txt or publisher blocks (NYT, Guardian, 241 Gannett properties now block the Archive's crawlers).
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
Browsing history and search queries may be logged. No account required for basic use. Archives are publicly accessible. After the October 2024 breach, 31 million user records (emails, screen names, bcrypt-hashed passwords) were stolen — if you had an account, assume your credentials were exposed.
How to protect yourself:
Use 'Save Page Now' to archive pages before they disappear — also works via email (savepagenow@archive.org). Always pair with archive.today: it bypasses robots.txt blocks that stop the Wayback Machine and captures pages on demand every 5 minutes. Don't rely on the Wayback Machine alone for news content — publisher blocks are growing fast. Use Tor Browser if your search queries are sensitive. If you had an Internet Archive account before October 2024, change your password and check Have I Been Pwned.
Downgraded from 'adequate' after the October 2024 breach exposed 31 million user records. The Archive is a trusted nonprofit with a 28-year track record, but its security posture failed under sustained attack. Browsing is logged, no E2EE for searches. Use Tor for sensitive queries. The publisher-blocking trend is a reliability concern, not a security one — but it means the archive's coverage of news content is shrinking in real time.
Who Owns This
Known issues
October 2024: SN_BLACKMETA hackers breached 31 million user accounts and launched sustained DDoS attacks; site went offline for days, returned read-only Oct 14, full service restored Nov 4. May-October 2025: 87% drop in news homepage captures due to archiving project breakdowns. February 2026: 241+ news sites (NYT, Guardian, 200+ Gannett properties) now block Internet Archive crawlers via robots.txt, citing AI scraping concerns. September 2024: Lost Hachette v. Internet Archive appeal — Second Circuit ruled controlled digital lending is not fair use; IA declined Supreme Court review in December 2024. April 2025: DOGE cut two active federal grants totaling ~$595K.
Pricing
Free
This is an editorial assessment based on publicly available information as of 2026-04-02, 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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