Copy any website free — the options, and where each one breaks
Five genuinely free ways to copy any website, what each keeps, where each falls apart, and the measured fidelity of every one with the original server offline.
Everything worth using here is free. The interesting question is not price, it is what each free option quietly drops — because all of them look fine until you open the copy with the original site unreachable.
The five free options
1. Chrome's own "Save page as → Webpage, Complete" — no install, no account. You get an HTML file plus a _files folder. Good enough for a text article; on a modern marketing page it misses most of what JavaScript built after load, keeps only one srcset candidate per image, and gives you two objects to carry around instead of one.
2. wget -p -k -E — free, scriptable, ancient and reliable for static sites. It has no layout engine, so anything rendered client-side simply is not there, and it rewrites links well but leaves plenty of assets pointing at the origin. Measured: 87.40% average, and 554 requests still aimed at the original site.
3. monolith — one static binary, one output file, no browser. Excellent for articles. Same blind spot as wget on rendered content. Measured: 83.44%, 365 remote requests left.
4. SingleFile — a genuinely good open-source extension that runs in the browser, so it sees rendered content and inlines assets at any size. It is the strongest free option and the one we lose ground to on simple pages. Measured: 87.93%.
5. CopyAnySite's free key — our extension with no card required: capture a page, export standalone HTML, a ZIP, WordPress blocks or an agent kit, with a monthly cap on captures rather than a crippled feature set. Measured: 98.87%, best or tied on 8 of 8 benchmark rows.
The numbers, and how to reproduce them
Same eight pages, same renderer, three runs, every copy re-rendered with the original origin blocked and diffed against the live page:
| Tool | Average fidelity | Remote requests left |
|---|---|---|
| CopyAnySite | 98.87% | 4 |
| SingleFile | 87.93% | 0 |
wget -p -k | 87.40% | 554 |
| monolith | 83.44% | 365 |
SingleFile's zero is real and worth respecting — it inlines everything regardless of size. Ours is four because we cap embedded video and audio, and past that budget a clip keeps its original URL rather than producing a 300 MB file nobody can open. That is a deliberate trade, and it is why our number is not zero.
Reproduce all of it with npm run bench:rivals in the repository. If a row disagrees with us on your machine we would rather hear about it than not.
Which free option to pick
- Text article, one page, keep it simple → Chrome's save, or monolith for a single file.
- Static site, many pages, scriptable →
wget -p -k, or read download an entire website. - Modern JS-heavy page, want one clean file → SingleFile or CopyAnySite.
- You need the copy to be editable afterwards, in WordPress or by an agent → CopyAnySite, because that is an export format rather than a file rename. See copy any website to WordPress.
Where "free" should make you suspicious
Anything web-based that promises to copy a site by URL alone is running a headless browser it controls, which means: no access to pages behind your login, no access to anything geo- or bot-gated, and your target URL sitting in somebody's logs. Anything asking for your CMS admin credentials to "copy for you" is asking for far more than a copy needs. A browser extension needs neither, because the page is already open in front of it.
FAQ
What is the best free way to copy any website?
For a single modern page, an in-browser capture — SingleFile or CopyAnySite's free key — because both read the page after JavaScript has finished. For a static multi-page site, wget -p -k is still the pragmatic answer.
Is CopyAnySite free?
There is a free key that needs no card, with a monthly capture cap. Paid licences are one-time, not subscriptions, and the price steps up as licences are issued — the current price and seats remaining are served live at /v1/pricing.
Can I copy a website for free without installing anything?
Yes — Chrome's own "Save page as → Webpage, Complete" needs nothing installed. Expect to lose client-rendered content, and expect a folder alongside the HTML file rather than one portable document.
Do free website copiers work on sites behind a login?
Only the ones that run inside your own browser. Server-side and URL-based copiers fetch the page as an anonymous visitor and get the login screen instead.
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