Learn how Webrecorder's open-source tools, ArchiveWeb.page, Browsertrix, and ReplayWeb.page, capture and replay interactive web archives, plus Browsertrix…
Webrecorder is an open-source project focused on high-fidelity web archiving, tracing back to developer Ilya Kreymer's early browser-based archiving prototypes, which were funded and developed at the nonprofit Rhizome starting in 2016.
In 2020, the project split: the hosted archiving service became Conifer under Rhizome, while Kreymer founded Webrecorder Software LLC in the United States to continue building the underlying open-source tools.
Rather than taking static snapshots, Webrecorder's tools capture pages as they actually behave in a browser, including scripts, video, audio, and interactive elements, so archived copies replay just as the original did.
ArchiveWeb.page is a browser extension and desktop app that lets anyone capture pages as they browse, while ReplayWeb.page is a browser-based viewer that can replay archived content without needing a server.
Browsertrix is Webrecorder's cloud-based crawling service, designed to archive entire websites at scale for organizations that need automated, high-fidelity captures rather than manual page-by-page recording.
Webrecorder maintains the WACZ file format, an open standard for packaging web archives, along with pywb, a Python library used to power replay for archives created with its tools.
Webrecorder's core tools, ArchiveWeb.page, ReplayWeb.page, and pywb, are free and open source, and can be self-hosted or run entirely in the browser without an account.
Browsertrix, the hosted crawling service, offers a free trial period before converting to a paid Standard tier priced around 30 dollars per month, which includes several hundred minutes of crawl time, hundreds of gigabytes of storage, and multiple concurrent crawls.
Larger organizations with bigger crawl volumes or dedicated support needs can arrange custom Browsertrix pricing above the Standard tier.
Webrecorder is used to capture, preserve, and replay interactive copies of web pages, commonly for legal evidence, research, journalism, and library archiving.
Its core tools, ArchiveWeb.page, ReplayWeb.page, and pywb, are free and open source; the hosted Browsertrix crawling service has paid plans starting around 30 dollars per month.
ArchiveWeb.page is a browser tool for manually capturing pages as you browse them, while Browsertrix is a cloud crawling service for automatically archiving entire websites at scale.
WACZ is an open, standardized file format that Webrecorder maintains for packaging and sharing web archive collections.
Yes, its tools are specifically built to capture dynamic, script-driven content, video, audio, and user interactions, not just static HTML.
Yes, its core tools are open source, and most can be self-hosted or run entirely client-side.
Webrecorder focuses on high-fidelity, interactive capture and open standards like WACZ, making it better suited to evidentiary or research-grade archiving than simple crawl-based snapshot tools.
Librarians, digital archivists, journalists, researchers, and legal or compliance teams are among its most common users.