Pastebins similar to the ones referenced in this article have been around since at least 2002.[1] Pastebin.com is one of the earliest public pastebins and has spawned a large number of direct descendants (such as Pastebin.us), based on its open source PHP code.[citation needed] Pastebin.com was inspired[2] by a basic PHP code sharing application called Paste.[3]

Pastebot,[4] a stand-alone Perl application incorporating both an IRC client and a web server, was created for EFnet #perl as late as March 2002.[5] It is still in use.[6]

Over time, many of the public pastebins have become specialized and targeted at a single group of users.[7][8] This benefits the users by letting them share code or text in a consistent and clean manner. In many cases, pastes made to pastebins are kept only for some time, usually a month.[9]