waybackpy
Python package that interfaces with the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine APIs. Archive pages and retrieve archived pages easily.
Decision gist · record as of 2026-08-14
Yes, if you need to interact with the Wayback Machine APIs and don't require active maintenance. The package is stable, has no known vulnerabilities, low install friction, and a permissive license. However, be aware that it has been dormant since 2022—if the Wayback Machine APIs change significantly, you may need to fork or patch it yourself. For read-heavy use it is low-risk; for heavy archiving workloads, test thoroughly first.AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying
Before you install
- Requires a user-agent string when instantiating API classes; the Wayback Machine APIs enforce this for request identification.
- Low install friction: pure Python wheel with three common dependencies (click, requests, urllib3).
- Maintenance is dormant—last release was 2022-03-15 and last commit 2024-02-26—but the package is marked Production/Stable and has no known vulnerabilities, so it remains usable for read-heavy Wayback Machine queries.
License · maintenance · safety
MIT (permissive) — MIT license (permissive) means you can use, modify, and distribute waybackpy freely in commercial or private projects with minimal restrictions—only attribution and license inclusion are required.
last release 2022-03-15 (1613 days) · last repo commit 2024-02-26 · 602 stars
0 known vulnerabilities (OSV.dev, 2026-08-14) · 4,861,941 downloads/mo, #2,212 on PyPI
Alternatives
Verify before relying
pip install waybackpy
from waybackpy import WaybackMachineSaveAPI
url = "https://example.com"
user_agent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:40.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/40.0"
save_api = WaybackMachineSaveAPI(url, user_agent)
archive_url = save_api.save()
print(archive_url)- Whether the package's dormant status affects reliability of Wayback Machine API calls as the Internet Archive's APIs evolve.
- Performance characteristics when querying large date ranges or handling high-volume snapshot iteration.
What it is and what it does
Waybackpy is a Python library and command-line tool that wraps three Internet Archive Wayback Machine APIs: SavePageNow (to archive a live page), CDX Server (to query historical snapshots with filtering), and Availability (to find oldest, newest, or near-date snapshots). It lets you programmatically save web pages to the archive, retrieve snapshots from specific dates, and iterate over all archived versions of a URL without writing raw HTTP requests.
The package is pure Python, depends only on click, requests, and urllib3, and supports Python 3.6 and later. It works both as an importable module for scripts and as a standalone CLI tool. The library is marked Production/Stable but has been dormant since early 2022, meaning it is unlikely to receive updates for new Wayback Machine API changes, though it remains functional for standard archiving and retrieval tasks.
Use it for
- Archive a live web page to the Wayback Machine and retrieve its archive URL for documentation or citation.
- Query historical snapshots of a website to find when content changed or to retrieve a specific version from a known date.
- Automate bulk archiving of multiple URLs or iterate over all snapshots of a site within a date range.
- Build a CLI tool or script that lets non-developers search and retrieve archived web pages without API knowledge.
- Verify that a page was archived at a specific time or retrieve the oldest available snapshot of a URL.
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page. Verify before relying on it.
Yes, if you need to interact with the Wayback Machine APIs and don't require active maintenance.
The package is stable, has no known vulnerabilities, low install friction, and a permissive license. However, be aware that it has been dormant since 2022—if the Wayback Machine APIs change significantly, you may need to fork or patch it yourself. For read-heavy use it is low-risk; for heavy archiving workloads, test thoroughly first.
Install
waybackpy on PyPI
Before you install
Low install friction: pure Python wheel with three common dependencies (click, requests, urllib3). Maintenance is dormant—last release was 2022-03-15 and last commit 2024-02-26—but the package is marked Production/Stable and has no known vulnerabilities, so it remains usable for read-heavy Wayback Machine queries.
Requires a user-agent string when instantiating API classes; the Wayback Machine APIs enforce this for request identification.
License in practice
MIT license (permissive) means you can use, modify, and distribute waybackpy freely in commercial or private projects with minimal restrictions—only attribution and license inclusion are required.
Quickstart
pip install waybackpy
from waybackpy import WaybackMachineSaveAPI
url = "https://example.com"
user_agent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:40.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/40.0"
save_api = WaybackMachineSaveAPI(url, user_agent)
archive_url = save_api.save()
print(archive_url)Verify before relying
- Whether the package's dormant status affects reliability of Wayback Machine API calls as the Internet Archive's APIs evolve.
- Performance characteristics when querying large date ranges or handling high-volume snapshot iteration.
Package facts
| License | MIT permissive |
| Python support | Supports the current Python release >=3.6 |
| Install friction | Low. Pure-Python wheel |
| Runtime dependencies | 3 packagesclickrequestsurllib3 |
| Maintenance | Dormant 1,613 days since the last release |
| Last repo commit | |
| First released | |
| Downloads | 4,861,941 / month, #2,212 on PyPI 30-day window, as of 2026-08-14 |
| Known vulnerabilities | None known OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-14 |
| Classifiers | Development Status :: 5 - Production/StableIntended Audience :: DevelopersIntended Audience :: End Users/DesktopLicense :: OSI Approved :: MIT LicenseNatural Language :: EnglishProgramming Language :: PythonProgramming Language :: Python :: 3Programming Language :: Python :: 3.10Programming Language :: Python :: 3.6Programming Language :: Python :: 3.7Programming Language :: Python :: 3.8Programming Language :: Python :: 3.9Programming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: CPythonTyping :: Typed |
Evidence: waybackpy-3.0.6-py3-none-any.whl
Tags
Let your AI agent find packages like this
Example. Real query, live index.
You found this page by searching. An agent finds it by wishing: SkillFed indexes 14,416 PyPI packages by what they can do, searchable in plain language.
wish › “wayback machine api python”
- waybackpyWaybackpy provides Python and CLI access to the Internet Archive's…
- savepagenowWrapper and CLI tool to submit URLs to archive.org's Save Page Now…
- internetarchiveProgrammatic and command-line interface to search, browse, and…
Give your agent the search over MCP, or paste the wish link into any chat.
More WWW/HTTP packages
urllib3 is an HTTP client library that provides thread-safe connection pooling, SSL/TLS verification, multipart file uploads, request retries, compression support, and proxy handling for Python applications.
Requests is a Python HTTP library that simplifies sending HTTP/1.1 requests with automatic handling of headers, authentication, cookies, and response parsing.
h11 is a pure-Python HTTP/1.1 protocol implementation that handles parsing and serializing HTTP messages without any built-in I/O, letting you integrate it with any network layer you choose.
HTTPX is a fully featured HTTP client library for Python that provides both sync and async APIs, with support for HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2, plus an integrated command-line client.
Install it if you are building new projects or modernizing existing ones that rely on HTTP.
A minimal low-level HTTP client library that sends HTTP requests with thread-safe and task-safe connection pooling, supporting HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, proxies, and both sync and async interfaces.
aiohttp is an async HTTP client and server framework built on asyncio, supporting both WebSockets and middleware-based routing for building concurrent web applications.
Install it if you need async HTTP client or server capabilities in asyncio-based applications.
See also savepagenow · internetarchive · arpy · zipfile36 · handy-archives · Wikipedia-API · fastdownload · extractcode · cabarchive · libarchive-c