ScreenshotAPIs Turns Any URL Into a Screenshot or PDF With One API Call
ScreenshotAPIs is a REST API for converting URLs or raw HTML into screenshots and PDFs — with ad blocking, CSS/JS injection, and a pay-once credit option that never expires, aimed at developers who don't want to run their own headless browser fleet.
ScreenshotAPIs Turns Any URL Into a Screenshot or PDF With One API Call
ScreenshotAPIs is a REST API that does one job — turning a URL or a block of raw HTML into a screenshot or PDF — and leans on that focus rather than trying to be a full browser-automation platform. Send it a URL, get back a PNG, JPEG, WebP, or PDF. It's built on Playwright and Chromium, which is the same rendering stack most of its competitors use, but the product decisions around it are what differentiate it in an unusually crowded category.
What it does
Per the company's own site, the core feature set covers:
- Screenshots in PNG, JPEG, or WebP — full-page or viewport, retina-quality
- PDF rendering with A4, Letter, Legal, and Tabloid formats, plus custom margins and headers
- OG image generation — pass a CSS selector to capture just one page element, useful for generating dynamic social cards
- URL or raw HTML input — render a live public page or inject your own HTML with no hosting required
- Ad and cookie-banner blocking — one flag blocks 40+ ad networks for cleaner captures
- CSS and JS injection before capture, for hiding elements or running setup code
- Webhook callbacks — async results via an HMAC-signed webhook, rather than holding a connection open
The API is callable from cURL, Python, Node.js, or Go, with official SDKs for the latter two.
How it works
# Screenshot a URL → PNG
curl -X POST https://screenshotapis.org/v1/screenshot \
-H "X-Api-Key: sk_live_your_key" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"url": "https://example.com", "format": "png"}' \
--output screenshot.png
# Render HTML → PDF
curl -X POST https://screenshotapis.org/v1/pdf \
-H "X-Api-Key: sk_live_your_key" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"html": "<h1>Hello</h1>", "format": "A4"}' \
--output document.pdf
Pricing: the detail worth flagging
The pitch that stands out from ScreenshotAPIs' pricing page is the option to buy credits once and use them indefinitely, instead of committing to a subscription. Alongside standard monthly tiers — $19/month for 2,000 renders, up to $299/month for 75,000 — there's a one-time credit-pack option explicitly marketed as never expiring, aimed at agencies and side projects with irregular usage rather than steady monthly volume. The free tier is 100 renders per month with no card required.
That's a meaningful difference from how most of its direct competitors price. Several rival screenshot APIs — including some reviewed in ScreenshotAPIs' own comparison content — tie free trials to a card-on-file and a short expiry window, or expire unused credits after a fixed period.
