Updated August 2026
    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    28k

    ArchiveBox: Maintenance, Licence and Alternatives

    Create HTML & screenshot archives of sites from your bookmarks, browsing history, RSS feeds, or other sources (alternative to Wayback Machine).

    TL;DR • ArchiveBox • as of August 2026

    ArchiveBox is an open-source archiving and digital preservation (dp) project, with 28k GitHub stars and a health score of 95/100. It committed 1682 times in the last twelve months across 9 of those months, and its status is actively maintained. Licence: MIT. It has real momentum, so treat it as a live competitor rather than a stale repository.

    28k
    GitHub stars
    95/100
    Health score
    1682
    Commits (12 mo)
    9/12
    Active months

    Maintenance health

    Status Actively maintained — Committed within the last 45 days.
    Last commit 2026-08-15
    Days since last commit 2
    Commits, last 3 months 1019
    Commits, last 12 months 1682
    Months with activity 9 of 12
    Last release 2026-08-09
    Archived No
    Licence MIT
    Category Archiving and Digital Preservation (DP)

    Health score combines commit recency, twelve-month commit volume, months with activity, release recency and archive state. Metadata refreshed August 2026.

    What the licence lets you do

    MIT

    Permissive (MIT, Apache, BSD): you can fork it, close the source and sell it. Lowest legal friction for a commercial product.

    This matters most when you plan to sell a hosted version. A permissive licence means anyone — including a competitor with more capital — can do the same, so your defensibility has to come from distribution, support or data, not from the code.

    What ArchiveBox means for your idea

    ArchiveBox is shipping code consistently, so a buyer comparing your product will find a maintained free option. Price and position against the total cost of self-hosting it, not against the paid incumbent's list price.

    Winnable, but differentiation is not optional. Pick one underserved segment and be visibly better for it rather than competing feature-for-feature with a free tool.

    ArchiveBox: common questions

    Is ArchiveBox still maintained in 2026?

    Actively maintained. ArchiveBox recorded 1682 commits over the last twelve months, with activity in 9 of those months and 1019 commits in the last quarter. Last commit: 2026-08-15. Last release: 2026-08-09. Committed within the last 45 days.

    Can I use ArchiveBox commercially?

    ArchiveBox is published under MIT. Permissive (MIT, Apache, BSD): you can fork it, close the source and sell it. Lowest legal friction for a commercial product.

    How crowded is the Archiving and Digital Preservation (DP) category?

    14 open-source implementations, 9 of them actively maintained, led by ArchiveBox at 28k stars. Saturation score 45/100 — Contested. Several maintained alternatives exist, but no one owns the category.

    ArchiveBox alternatives in Archiving and Digital Preservation (DP)

    Wallabag

    Archiving and Digital Preservation (DP)

    13k

    Wallabag, formerly Poche, is a web application allowing you to save articles to read them later with improved readability.

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    MIT

    CKAN

    Archiving and Digital Preservation (DP)

    5.1k

    Make open data websites.

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    AGPL-3.0

    bitmagnet

    Archiving and Digital Preservation (DP)

    4.3k

    BitTorrent indexer, DHT crawler, content classifier and torrent search engine with web UI, GraphQL API and Servarr stack integration.

    Slowing down
    MIT

    Open Archiver

    Archiving and Digital Preservation (DP)

    2.2k

    Email archiving solution with full-text search and eDiscovery search features.

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    AGPL-3.0

    Wayback

    Archiving and Digital Preservation (DP)

    2.2k

    A self-hosted toolkit for archiving webpages to the Internet Archive, archive.today, IPFS, and local file systems.

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    GPL-3.0

    mail-archiver

    Archiving and Digital Preservation (DP)

    2.1k

    Web application for archiving, searching, and exporting emails from multiple accounts (IMAP, M365 or Import). Featuring folder sync, attachment support, mailbox migration and a dashboard.

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    GPL-3.0

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