FAW Alternatives for Capturing Web Pages as Evidence

FAW, short for Forensics Acquisition of Websites, is a forensic browser for capturing web pages so they can be used as evidence in criminal and civil cases. It was first released on March 2, 2013 by Italian developers Davide Bassani and Matteo Zavattari, and the FAW site now lists Envolve Forensics LTD in London as the company. It is alive, with editions from FAW Lite to Law Enforcement, plus capture modes for Tor, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, FTP and email.

The friction is in buying and running it. The requirements page lists Windows 10 or 11 only, a minimum horizontal resolution of 1,366 pixels, display scaling at 100% and Npcap 1.50, and says use in a virtual machine "is not recommended." No prices appear on the site; you buy through a retailer in your region. Several FAW editions are 24-hour licences rather than annual ones, which suits a single job but not daily work.

The picks below start with tools an investigator can install today on any desktop and end with archiving services for organisations that need to keep their own sites and social accounts on record. Wireshark, The Sleuth Kit and FTK Imager are not here, because they do not capture web pages.

Prices below are as of November 6, 2026. Our method is on How we review tools.

Quick comparison

Hunchly

Hunchly flips FAW's model. Rather than starting a capture on purpose, it records every page you load in a Chromium browser into the case you have open in its desktop app, with a SHA-256 hash and timestamps. Maltego bought Hunchly in May 2025, and it is still sold as its own product.

It runs on 64-bit Windows 10, macOS 15 or newer and Ubuntu 22.04 or newer, according to the Bellingcat toolkit entry, which also covers its limits in detail. The Classic plan is one annual subscription per user across several computers or VMs, so it runs inside VMs, which FAW advises against. A Cloud plan adds browser-based investigation with 15 GB of encrypted storage.

Best for: OSINT researchers, journalists and investigators who need a record of everything they saw, not only the pages they chose to save.

Pricing:

• Classic: $169 or €149 per year, one user
• 30-day free trial, all features, no card
• Multiple licences and bulk discounts through sales

Watch out for:

• Video is saved as screenshots, not files. The Bellingcat entry says Hunchly captures what you saw on the page "but not in motion," so keep a separate video downloader.
• Intel Mac support ends in September 2027, so plan for Apple Silicon if you work on a Mac.

Official site: Hunchly.

Page Vault

Page Vault sells two things: browser software your staff run, and On Demand, where its team does the capture for you. The Page Vault pricing page lists On Demand from $199 for websites, $299 for videos, $349 for social media profiles and $199 for documents, with rush captures, affidavits and eDiscovery load files as add-ons.

That service is the main difference from FAW, where an examiner does every capture. For a team with only occasional web evidence jobs, paying per project avoids keeping a trained forensic browser user on staff.

Best for: Law firms that need court-ready captures with affidavits and would rather outsource the work.

Pricing:

• On Demand: websites from $199, videos from $299, social profiles from $349, documents from $199; free quotes
• Browser software: Solo (1 login), Team (3), Professional and Enterprise (unlimited); annual contracts, price on request

Watch out for:

• The software plans show no prices, and batch captures and affidavits are only ticked for Professional and Enterprise.
• No free trial is offered on the pricing page.

Official site: Page Vault.

WebPreserver

WebPreserver comes from the Pagefreezer family and is aimed at law firms and law enforcement. You install a Chrome plugin that adds a capture button, and the WebPreserver site says captures are saved as digitally signed PDF and WARC files in the vendor's cloud.

It is tuned for social media, naming Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram along with websites and blogs. A free trial is offered. Compared with FAW, there is nothing to install beyond the browser extension, so it works on any desktop that runs Chrome.

Best for: Legal teams that collect social media posts as evidence and want signed files without a desktop app.

Pricing:

• No public price; free trial available

Watch out for:

• Evidence lives in WebPreserver's cloud, so check data residency rules before you use it on a sensitive matter.
• Chrome is the only browser named.

Official site: WebPreserver.

Forensic OSINT

Forensic OSINT is a browser extension with a real free tier. The Forensic OSINT pricing page gives the Free plan 100 captures and 3 video downloads a year, plus 10 IP lookups a month. Essential removes the capture cap and raises video downloads to 50 a year, and ELITE allows unlimited video downloads of up to 3.5 hours each.

Its feature table lists file hashing, PDF reports, focused captures and social timeline discovery, and the top tier is called ELITE Assisted Capture. Unlike FAW, there is no Windows-only desktop install to manage.

Best for: Solo investigators who want to try forensic web capture without paying first.

Pricing:

• Free: 100 captures and 3 video downloads per year
• Essential, ELITE and ELITE Assisted Capture: price on request
• Volume discounts for 20 or more ELITE or ELITE Assisted Capture licences

Watch out for:

• Paid plan prices are not published, so you cannot compare it with Hunchly's $169 without contacting sales.
• Check which browsers the extension supports before you buy.

Official site: Forensic OSINT.

ArchiveWeb.page

Webrecorder's ArchiveWeb.page records pages as you browse and exports them as WARC or WACZ, the formats web archives use. It is free and open source under the AGPL-3.0, runs as a Chromium extension or as a desktop app for Windows, macOS 10.15 and later, and Linux, and replays captures in ReplayWeb.page.

Version 0.17.1 shipped in September 2026. Its Autopilot mode scrolls infinite feeds and runs behaviours for Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, which helps with timelines that only load as you scroll.

Best for: Researchers and small teams who need a faithful, replayable copy of a page and can document custody themselves.

Pricing:

• Free and open source (AGPL-3.0)

Watch out for:

• The Autopilot docs warn that behaviours "are not always guaranteed to work as expected." Check each capture by replaying it.
• It produces archives, not an evidence report, so hashes, notes and chain of custody are your job.

Official site: ArchiveWeb.page.

OSIRT iii

OSIRT began as a university spinout founded by Dr Joseph Williams and is now run by OSIRT Ltd in the UK. Its capture product, OSIRT iii, preserves web pages, files, recordings, media and notes in one case, with hashing and auditability built into the workflow, per the OSIRT site.

A second product, PULSE, handles monitoring and text analysis. For police teams that used FAW for open-source investigations, OSIRT offers a case-first workflow with a clear chronology rather than a browser that saves files.

Best for: Law enforcement and investigation units that want capture, notes and chronology in one case file.

Pricing:

• No public price; book a demo

Watch out for:

• The site lists no supported operating systems or version, so ask for both during the demo.
• Pricing is by conversation only, which slows small-team purchases.

Official site: OSIRT iii.

PageFreezer

PageFreezer solves a different problem than FAW: keeping a continuous record of your own websites, social accounts and SMS for regulators and legal holds. Its archive uses digital signatures and WORM storage and lists FINRA, SEC and FOIA use cases. The pricing page starts at $1,500 a year, depending on capture type, frequency, licences and retention.

If your FAW use was mainly FAW Snap Site, the scheduled full-site backup edition, PageFreezer is the managed version of that job. Other compliance archives are weighed on our PageFreezer alternatives page.

Best for: Public bodies and regulated firms that must keep their own web and social content on record.

Pricing:

• From $1,500 a year, depending on scope
• No free trial; consultation first

Watch out for:

• It archives accounts and sites you own. It is not built for capturing a third party's page during an investigation.
• A July 2022 Capterra review says platform requirement changes on social networks interrupted capture.

Official site: PageFreezer. Our listing: PageFreezer.

Browsertrix

Browsertrix is Webrecorder's crawler for whole sites, driving real browsers and saving WACZ files with a QA step. It replaces FAW's BOT mode for large jobs, and it can log in with saved browser profiles. The Browsertrix pricing page lists Starter at $30 a month with 180 execution minutes, 100 GB and 2,000 pages per crawl.

Standard is $60 a month and Plus $120 a month, with Pro and Enterprise quoted and billed yearly. The code is AGPLv3, so a lab with Kubernetes skills can run its own copy.

Best for: Teams that need repeatable crawls of an entire site, not page-by-page evidence.

Pricing:

• Starter: $30 a month, 180 minutes, 100 GB
• Standard: $60 a month, 360 minutes, 220 GB
• Plus: $120 a month, 720 minutes, 500 GB
• Pro and Enterprise: quote, billed yearly; 7-day trial on Starter

Watch out for:

• It has no legal hold, affidavit or evidence report, so custody records stay manual.
• Each plan has a monthly budget of execution minutes, so a big site can use up Starter's allowance in a few crawls.

Official site: Browsertrix.

How to choose

When to stay with FAW

Stay with FAW if your cases need its less common capture modes. It handles jobs few rivals do in one tool, such as Tor pages, FTP and SFTP capture without changing file metadata, P2P streams and certified mailbox downloads. Students, professors and associations can ask for free licences, and a demo version is on the FAW site.

Frequently asked questions