CopyAnySite vs SingleFile
Both save a page as one self-contained HTML file. Per-page fidelity scores with the original server unreachable, plus where SingleFile is the better choice.
SingleFile is the tool we benchmark against most, because it is free, open source and genuinely the best of the free single-file savers. This is the honest comparison, including the rows where it wins.
Same measurement, both tools
Eight pages, three runs, median. Every copy is rendered with the original host unreachable and diffed against the live page with pixelmatch at desktop and mobile widths. Requests still pointing at the origin are counted separately, because a copy that hotlinks is not a copy. Harness: npm run bench:rivals.
| Page | Kind | CopyAnySite | SingleFile |
|---|---|---|---|
| arthize.com | agency site | 99.97% | 99.84% |
| linear.app | animation-heavy marketing | 99.64% | 88.28% |
| news.ycombinator.com | table layout | 100% | 95.86% |
| Travlia | commercial WP theme demo | 98.39% | 74.64% |
| wikipedia.org | content-heavy article | 100% | 99.99% |
| stripe.com | gradients, heavy JS | 95.99% | 65.55% |
| heyclicky.com | liquid-glass SVG filters | 98.71% | 81.41% |
| tailwindcss.com | utility CSS docs | 98.25% | 97.84% |
| Average | 98.87% | 87.93% | |
| Remote requests left | 4 | 0 |
Read it this way: on text-heavy and simple pages the two are indistinguishable — 99.99% vs 100% on Wikipedia is not a difference anyone can see. The gap opens on pages where the design is the product: 24 points on a commercial theme demo, 30 on stripe.com, 17 on a page built from SVG filters.
Why the gap exists
SingleFile serialises the DOM and inlines the assets it can find. CopyAnySite records the computed style of every element and pseudo-element from the live page, which brings along the things that decide fidelity on design-led pages:
- Webfont adoption. A page declaring
font-display: optionalrenders a fresh copy in the fallback face forever, because the embedded font is not decoded in the first frames. Rewriting embedded faces toswapwas worth 4 points on one page alone. - Pseudo-elements.
::before/::aftercontent and their background images. - Hidden SVG sprite sheets. Where most logos live, and routinely pruned as invisible.
- Masks, border-images,
image-set(). Assets referenced from CSS rather than markup. - Canvas. No URL to fetch; has to be snapshotted as pixels.
- Document mode and body width. A page served without a doctype must be rebuilt in quirks mode or boxes shift.
- A verbatim candidate. We also keep an unmodified copy of the settled DOM and ship it only if it re-renders itself with zero geometry or style drift.
Where SingleFile is the better choice
- It is free and open source. CopyAnySite is a one-time paid licence.
- It leaves zero remote requests. It inlines assets at any size; we keep a media budget, so a handful of oversized files stay remote (4 references across eight pages). If absolute self-containment matters more than file size, that is a real advantage.
- Smaller files. 5 MB vs our 50 MB on stripe.com. Base64 plus "embed everything" is expensive.
- Firefox support. We are Chrome/Chromium (MV3) only.
- Articles and docs. On Wikipedia and the Tailwind docs the difference is a rounding error, and it costs nothing.
Where CopyAnySite does things SingleFile does not
- Bounded whole-site crawls with depth, page cap and include/exclude patterns.
- Editable WordPress/Gutenberg export — section blocks plus an enqueued stylesheet and media uploaded to the library, rather than a frozen file.
- ZIP bundles and an AI dev kit (markup, extracted CSS, asset manifest, structure spec) for coding agents.
- An MCP server, so an agent in Cursor or Claude can capture and read a page directly.
- A side panel with per-capture diagnostics: images embedded, fonts embedded, remote references remaining.
Straight recommendation
Saving an article, a documentation page, or anything text-first, for free: SingleFile. Copying a marketing page, a theme demo, or anything where the visual craft is the point — or needing it in WordPress or in front of an agent: CopyAnySite.
And whichever you use, run the test yourself: open the copy with the origin blocked and compare.
FAQ
Is CopyAnySite better than SingleFile?
On design-led pages, measurably — 98.87% vs 87.93% average across our eight-page benchmark, with the gap concentrated on theme demos, gradient-heavy marketing and SVG-filter pages. On articles and docs they are effectively tied, and SingleFile is free.
Is SingleFile good enough?
For most text-heavy pages, yes. It is free, open source, cross-browser, and near-perfect on that class of page.
Why are CopyAnySite files larger?
Because everything the page rendered is embedded, including large images and video up to a budget. Self-contained and small are in direct tension; we chose self-contained.
Does SingleFile support whole-site copying or WordPress export?
No. It is a single-page tool that produces one HTML file. Crawling, WordPress blocks, ZIP bundles, AI kits and MCP are outside its scope.
Can I use both?
Yes, and plenty of people should: SingleFile for everyday reading captures, a rendered-DOM capture when the page has to look exactly right or land in a CMS.
Try it on the page you are looking at
CopyAnySite is a Chrome extension: open any page you can reach, press capture, and take away a standalone HTML file, an editable WordPress page, or a kit a coding agent can build from. The free key needs no card.
Download CopyAnySite