Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

GNU Wget VS ArchiveBox

Compare GNU Wget VS ArchiveBox and see what are their differences

GNU Wget logo GNU Wget

GNU Wget is a free software package for retrieving files using HTTP(S) and FTP, the most...

ArchiveBox logo ArchiveBox

The open-source, self-hosted internet archiving solution
  • GNU Wget Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-26
  • ArchiveBox Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-13

ArchiveBox is a powerful, self-hosted internet archiving solution to collect, save, and view sites you want to preserve offline.

You can set it up as a command-line tool, web app, and desktop app (alpha), on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

You can feed it URLs one at a time, or schedule regular imports from browser bookmarks or history, feeds like RSS, bookmark services like Pocket/Pinboard, and more. See input formats for a full list.

It saves snapshots of the URLs you feed it in several formats: HTML, PDF, PNG screenshots, WARC, and more out-of-the-box, with a wide variety of content extracted and preserved automatically (article text, audio/video, git repos, etc.). See output formats for a full list.

The goal is to sleep soundly knowing the part of the internet you care about will be automatically preserved in durable, easily accessible formats for decades after it goes down.

GNU Wget

Website
gnu.org
$ Details
-
Platforms
-
Release Date
-

ArchiveBox

$ Details
free
Platforms
Linux Mac OSX Docker
Release Date
2017 May

GNU Wget features and specs

  • Free and Open Source
    GNU Wget is free to use and its source code is open, allowing users to modify and improve it as needed.
  • Non-Interactive Download
    Wget is a non-interactive command-line tool, meaning it can be used in scripts and scheduled tasks without manual intervention.
  • Robustness
    Wget is designed to be resilient in unstable network conditions, automatically retrying connections and downloads.
  • Recursive Download
    Wget can recursively download files from the web, allowing the mirroring of websites and deep-fetching of directories.
  • Resume Support
    It has the ability to resume partially downloaded files, which is particularly useful for large files or unreliable connections.
  • Protocol Support
    Supports HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP protocols, making it versatile for different types of downloads.
  • Flexibility
    Offers many command-line options, providing flexibility to customize its behavior for different use cases.

Possible disadvantages of GNU Wget

  • Command-Line Only
    Lacks a graphical user interface, which might be a drawback for users uncomfortable with command-line tools.
  • No Native Windows Support
    Does not natively support Windows; users need a POSIX environment like Cygwin or a port.
  • Learning Curve
    The extensive options and command-line nature can be intimidating and require a learning period for new users.
  • Limited Parallel Downloads
    By default, Wget does not support downloading multiple files simultaneously, which can slow down the downloading process.
  • Basic FTP Support
    FTP support is somewhat basic compared to specialized FTP clients, lacking advanced features.

ArchiveBox features and specs

  • Offline website saving
  • Tagging
  • Scheduled archiving
  • Recursive crawling
  • Media extraction
  • Article text extraction
  • Static HTML exports
  • Full-text search

GNU Wget videos

Linux Command Review: wget, ssh, nc (2 of 2)

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How To Clone Websites With wget | Linux
  • Review - Linux Commands 101 : wget - Download ALL THE THINGS!

ArchiveBox videos

Archiving the Internet Before it All Rots Away (talk by by ArchiveBox founder)

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Installing ArchiveBox On Ubuntu 20.04 Using A Hyper-V VM To Preserve OSINT Investigation Findings

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to GNU Wget and ArchiveBox)
Download Manager
100 100%
0% 0
Bookmark Manager
0 0%
100% 100
Utilities
66 66%
34% 34
Bookmarks
0 0%
100% 100

Questions and Answers

As answered by people managing GNU Wget and ArchiveBox.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

ArchiveBox's answer:

  • Django
  • SQLite
  • Wget
  • Chromium
  • Youtube-dl / yt-dlp
  • singlefile
  • readability
  • mercury
  • git
  • ripgrep
  • sonic

Who are some of the biggest customers of your product?

ArchiveBox's answer:

What's the story behind your product?

ArchiveBox's answer:

ArchiveBox aims to enable more of the internet to be saved from deterioration by empowering people to self-host their own archives. The intent is for all the web content you care about to be viewable with common software in 50 - 100 years without needing to run ArchiveBox or other specialized software to replay it.

Vast treasure troves of knowledge are lost every day on the internet to link rot. As a society, we have an imperative to preserve some important parts of that treasure, just like we preserve our books, paintings, and music in physical libraries long after the originals go out of print or fade into obscurity.

Whether it's to resist censorship by saving articles before they get taken down or edited, or just to save a collection of early 2010's flash games you love to play, having the tools to archive internet content enables to you save the stuff you care most about before it disappears.

Image from WTF is Link Rot?... The balance between the permanence and ephemeral nature of content on the internet is part of what makes it beautiful. I don't think everything should be preserved in an automated fashion--making all content permanent and never removable, but I do think people should be able to decide for themselves and effectively archive specific content that they care about.

Because modern websites are complicated and often rely on dynamic content, ArchiveBox archives the sites in several different formats beyond what public archiving services like Archive.org/Archive.is save. Using multiple methods and the market-dominant browser to execute JS ensures we can save even the most complex, finicky websites in at least a few high-quality, long-term data formats.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

ArchiveBox's answer:

ArchiveBox differentiates itself from similar self-hosted projects by providing both a comprehensive CLI interface for managing your archive, a Web UI that can be used either independently or together with the CLI, and a simple on-disk data format that can be used without either.

ArchiveBox is neither the highest fidelity nor the simplest tool available for self-hosted archiving, rather it's a jack-of-all-trades that tries to do most things well by default. It can be as simple or advanced as you want, and is designed to do everything out-of-the-box but be tuned to suit your needs.

If you want better fidelity for very complex interactive pages with heavy JS/streams/API requests, check out ArchiveWeb.page and ReplayWeb.page.

If you want more bookmark categorization and note-taking features, check out Archivy, Memex, Polar, or LinkAce.

If you need more advanced recursive spider/crawling ability beyond --depth=1, check out Browsertrix, Photon, or Scrapy and pipe the outputted URLs into ArchiveBox.

How would you describe your primary audience?

ArchiveBox's answer:

  • journalists
  • lawyers
  • librarians
  • digital preservation specialists
  • researchers
  • students
  • homelab / self-hosting community

User comments

Share your experience with using GNU Wget and ArchiveBox. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare GNU Wget and ArchiveBox

GNU Wget Reviews

15 Best Httrack Alternatives Offline Browser Utility
If you are confused about how to get the command codes, you can get them on GNU Wget Manual.

ArchiveBox Reviews

We have no reviews of ArchiveBox yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, ArchiveBox seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 90 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

GNU Wget mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of GNU Wget yet. Tracking of GNU Wget recommendations started around Mar 2021.

ArchiveBox mentions (90)

  • Linkwarden: FOSS self-hostable bookmarking with AI-tagging and page archival
    I've used https://historio.us since 2011 and still pay for it to keep access to all the pages I've archived over the years. The price has been kept low enough that I can't bring myself to cancel it even though I've been using self-hosted https://archivebox.io/ for the last few years. I always include an archived link whenever I reference something in documentation. That's my main use at the moment. However, I... - Source: Hacker News / 4 days ago
  • Ask HN: How Do You Bookmark?
    2. Drop the link into my instance of ArchiveBox [0] and will return to it a few weeks/months later or, more often than not, never again [0] https://archivebox.io/. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Internet Archive breached again through stolen access tokens
    Is anyone using ArchiveBox regularly? It's a self-hosted archiving solution. Not the ambitious decentralized system I think this comment is thinking of but a practical way for someone to run an archive for themselves. https://archivebox.io/. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Tell HN: The Wayback Machine is up, in read-only mode
    I used to solely depend on Wayback machine to automate archiving pages, now I am archiving webpages using selenium python package on https://archive.ph/ and https://ghostarchive.org/ This told me not to depend on 3rd party parties. Might self-host https://archivebox.io/. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and I don't know what to do with them
    Https://archivebox.io/ For those with an interest. My del.icio.us collection (what was still online) lives on my NAS now. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing GNU Wget and ArchiveBox, you can also consider the following products

HTTrack - HTTrack is a free (GPL, libre/free software) and easy-to-use offline browser utility.

Raindrop.io - All your articles, photos, video & content from web & apps in one place.

SiteSucker - SiteSucker is a Macintosh application that automatically downloads Web sites from the Internet.

WebCopy - Cyotek WebCopy is a free tool for copying full or partial websites locally onto your harddisk for offline viewing.

wallabag - Save the web, freely.

Offline Explorer - MetaProducts Offline Explorer is a Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista program that allows you to...