# archive.today Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/archive-today/ 100 people recommended archive.today in Hacker News comments, 25 had mixed feelings and 213 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 12 months, in 62 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** More people criticize it than recommend it, citing the operator hijacking visitors' browsers for a DDoS attack and altering archived pages; those who recommend it use it to read paywalled articles and preserve pages. Summary written by Claude from the comments below. Claude agents reviewed it against the quotes on 2 Nov 2026. ## What people warn about - Used visitors' browsers for DDoS (5 comments in the sample): "It was running it via a script and intentionally using cache busting techniques to try to increase load on the hosted wordpress infrastructure." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47093568)) "If, when I visit your site, your site causes my browser to participate in a DDoS attack without my knowledge, your site is malicious." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47983327)) "The ‘small sin’ of wielding your userbase as a botnet is only palatable for HN’s readers because the site provides a desirable use" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47480468)) - Operator edits archived pages (4 comments in the sample): "The operator of archive.today (presumably one, at most a handful of people) can edit archived pages on archive.today" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47488431)) "they make silent changes to pages, their ownership is opaque, and they reserve the right to just disappear without a trace tomorrow" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50020388)) "they changed a "commenting as: [their alias]" UI element to "commenting as: [name of the blogger they were fighting with" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47103003)) - Blocks Cloudflare DNS, captcha loops (2 comments in the sample): "Archive.ph returns different results to Cloudflare’s resolvers intentionally, preventing Cloudflare DNS users from resolving it correctly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48509941)) "with the recent google captcha requiring phones and some people facing this issue and multitude of other issues with archive.is" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094138)) - Anonymous owner, unreliable long-term (1 comment in the sample): "When the proxy operator is (1) anonymous, (2) the potential target of coercion, and (3) outside the user's jurisdiction" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45839681)) ## Why people recommend it - Gets past paywalls and clutter (6 comments in the sample): "I'm always amazed by Archive.md/.is/whatever. To this day I don't understand how they manage to bypass a lot of paywalls." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46834527)) "The latter also serving you the content with no paywalls, ads, JavaScript, permalinks that 404 after a year" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49742827)) "This will work on most article sites to show you an archived version of it without any of these annoyances" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46756582)) - Resists censorship and takedowns (4 comments in the sample): "it's a great archival service if the most censored people are able to use it without their archives being censored" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47098660)) "I'd rather deal with this weird feud than not have access to any archived content that people want censored." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47097660)) "has all the right tools to publish information the governments and the largest of companies want silenced" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46870683)) - Often works where Wayback fails (2 comments in the sample): "Archive.today provides a better service (all things considered) compared to Wikipedia, at least when it comes to current affairs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47094001)) "Unfortunately Archive.today complies with these attack requests in some situations, but is still usually better than others." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46869856)) - Free and collects no personal data (2 comments in the sample): "archive.is has put a lot of effort and cost into its defence. And all for free to us, the users." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46878039)) "Archive.today on the other hand is a charitable archival project offered to the public for free." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47475454)) ## Other web archives people recommend - [Internet Archive](https://hackerapproved.com/p/internet-archive/): 112 recommend, 13 mixed, 49 criticize - [Wayback Machine](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wayback-machine/): 44 recommend, 9 mixed, 30 criticize - [Archive.org](https://hackerapproved.com/p/archive-org/): 33 recommend, 10 mixed, 21 criticize - [Unwall](https://hackerapproved.com/p/unwall/): 11 recommend, 1 mixed, 0 criticize ## The badge A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged. ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "archive.today", https://hackerapproved.com/p/archive-today/ (100 recommend, 25 mixed, 213 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026). Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.