Webrecorder is an American technology company founded by Ilya Kreymer that builds open source

web archiving Web archiving is the process of collecting, preserving, and providing access to material from the World Wide Web. The aim is to ensure that information is preserved in an archival format for research and the public. Web archivists typically ...

tools and maintains the WACZ file format.

History

In 2016

Rhizome In botany and dendrology, a rhizome ( ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and Shoot (botany), shoots from its Node (botany), nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from ...

was awarded a $600,000 USD multi-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund and continue to operate Webrecorder.io, an open source website that allowed users to archive and replay archived webpages. Lead by Ilya Kreymer and Dragan Espenschied, the project would build atop Kreymer's previous work as a consultant for Rhizome and continue to use pywb for capture and playback of WARC files. In 2020 after four years of development, Rhizome and Kreymer announced that Webrecorder would split into its own commercial entity, with the archiving service being renamed to "Conifer". Following the split, Kreymer would go on to release ArchiveWeb.page and ReplayWeb.page — applications that allow users to archive and replay archived webpages respectively, without the use of a central server to facilitate the capture or playback of archived material. In 2021, Webrecorder was awarded multiple grants from the Filecoin Foundation to work on design and standardization of browser-based web archive file formats and further development of Browsertrix, Webrecorder's cloud-based

SaaS Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike oth ...

archiving platform. In 2024, Webrecorder enabled open signups for Browsertrix allowing anyone to create their own account and start archiving websites.

Products

ArchiveWeb.page

ArchiveWeb.page is a browser extension and standalone desktop application that allows users to interactively create high-fidelity web archives as they browse the web similar to Rhizome's

Conifer Conifers () are a group of conifer cone, cone-bearing Spermatophyte, seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the phylum, division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a sin ...

. Because ArchiveWeb.page uses a full browser for archiving, it has been noted as being "more successful" than other non-browser-based archiving tools such as Heritrix at the cost of requiring manual operation during the capture process. ArchiveWeb.page supports exporting both WARC and WACZ files.

Browsertrix

Browsertrix is Webrecorder's

web archiving suite that allows users to crawl websites using a browser-based crawler and share links to web archives. Browsertrix supports importing and exporting WACZ files.

ReplayWeb.page

ReplayWeb.page is Webrecorder's browser-based web archive viewer available as both a web application and standalone desktop application. ReplayWeb.page can view archived content within WARC, WACZ, and HAR files

References