How to Preserve Any Web Page Locally with ArchiveBox – A Self‑Hosted Archiving Guide

ArchiveBox is an open‑source, self‑hosted web archiving tool that creates permanent copies of web pages to protect against link rot.

When a URL is submitted, ArchiveBox invokes external programs such as Chrome, wget, curl, and yt-dlp to download the full page. It stores the original HTML, a PNG screenshot, a PDF rendering, all media files, and a WARC archive.

ArchiveBox can also ingest browser bookmark files, history exports, Pocket or Pinboard export files, and RSS feeds, automatically archiving new items on a configurable schedule.

The archived data is saved as ordinary files (HTML, PDF, PNG, etc.), so the content remains accessible even if ArchiveBox is stopped.

Installation via Docker

Because ArchiveBox depends on many external binaries, the official documentation recommends using Docker to isolate dependencies.

# 1. Create and enter a data directory
mkdir -p ~/archivebox/data && cd ~/archivebox/data

# 2. Initialise the database and create an admin account
docker run -v $PWD:/data -it archivebox/archivebox init --setup

# 3. Start the web server
docker run -v $PWD:/data -p 8000:8000 archivebox/archivebox

After the containers start, open http://localhost:8000 in a browser to reach the simple management UI.

Storage considerations

Archiving complete pages can consume significant disk space. The official documentation estimates that 1 000 pages require between 1 GB and 50 GB, depending on the amount of embedded media (e.g., videos). Plan storage accordingly, especially on NAS or server environments.

Security note

Because ArchiveBox stores the original JavaScript, malicious scripts could execute when viewing the local copy. If security is a concern, disable JavaScript execution in the configuration or use a strict content‑security policy.

ArchiveBox therefore provides a robust, file‑based solution for preserving web content.

GitHub repository:

https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox