alekseykazandaev

Posted on Apr 6 • Originally published at site-shot.com

How to Take a Website Screenshot with Python

#webdev #python #api

If you are building monitoring dashboards, link previews, or visual QA tooling in Python, a screenshot API is a practical way to avoid browser automation overhead. This post walks through the common capture patterns Dev.to readers usually care about: basic screenshots, full-page capture, JSON output, mobile emulation, geolocation, and batch jobs.

Prerequisites

Python 3.7+
The requests library (pip install requests)
A Site-Shot API key (sign up here)

Basic Screenshot Capture

The simplest approach — send a GET request to the API and save the image:

import requests

response = requests.get("https://api.site-shot.com/", params={
    "url": "https://example.com",
    "userkey": "YOUR_API_KEY",
    "width": 1280,
    "height": 1024,
    "format": "png",
}, timeout=70)

with open("screenshot.png", "wb") as f:
    f.write(response.content)

That's it. The API renders the page in a real Chromium browser and returns the screenshot image directly.

Full Page Screenshot

To capture the entire scrollable page, not just the viewport:

response = requests.get("https://api.site-shot.com/", params={
    "url": "https://example.com",
    "userkey": "YOUR_API_KEY",
    "full_size": 1,
    "max_height": 15000,
    "format": "png",
}, timeout=70)

The full_size=1 parameter tells the API to scroll through the entire document. max_height caps the capture at 15,000 pixels (max 20,000).

JSON Response with Base64 Image

If you need the image as base64 along with HTTP response metadata:

import base64
import requests

response = requests.get("https://api.site-shot.com/", params={
    "url": "https://example.com",
    "userkey": "YOUR_API_KEY",
    "width": 1280,
    "height": 1024,
    "format": "png",
    "response_type": "json",
}, timeout=70)

payload = response.json()
if payload.get("error"):
    raise RuntimeError(payload["error"])

image_b64 = payload["image"]
if "," in image_b64:
    image_b64 = image_b64.split(",", 1)[1]

with open("screenshot.png", "wb") as f:
    f.write(base64.b64decode(image_b64))

The JSON response includes the image field (base64-encoded), HTTP status_code, and response_headers from the target URL.

Mobile Device Screenshot

Emulate a mobile viewport by setting width, height, and user agent:

response = requests.get("https://api.site-shot.com/", params={
    "url": "https://example.com",
    "userkey": "YOUR_API_KEY",
    "width": 375,
    "height": 812,
    "zoom": 100,
    "format": "png",
    "user_agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 16_0 like Mac OS X) "
                  "AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) "
                  "Version/16.0 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1",
}, timeout=70)

Screenshot from a Specific Country

Route the request through a country-specific proxy:

response = requests.get("https://api.site-shot.com/", params={
    "url": "https://example.com",
    "userkey": "YOUR_API_KEY",
    "country": "Germany",
    "language": "de",
    "format": "png",
}, timeout=70)

The country parameter automatically sets a proxy IP, default language, time zone, and geolocation for that country.

Batch Screenshots

To capture multiple URLs, loop through them:

import requests

API_KEY = "YOUR_API_KEY"
urls = [
    "https://example.com",
    "https://wikipedia.org",
    "https://github.com",
]

for url in urls:
    response = requests.get("https://api.site-shot.com/", params={
        "url": url,
        "userkey": API_KEY,
        "width": 1280,
        "height": 1024,
        "format": "png",
    }, timeout=70)

    filename = url.replace("https://", "").replace("/", "_") + ".png"
    with open(filename, "wb") as f:
        f.write(response.content)
    print(f"Saved {filename}")

For higher throughput, use concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor to capture multiple URLs in parallel — the API supports concurrent requests based on your plan's dedicated worker count.

Summary

The Site-Shot API makes it straightforward to capture website screenshots with Python. Key parameters:

Parameter	Description	Example
`url`	Target web page	`https://example.com`
`userkey`	Your API key	`abc123`
`width`	Viewport width (100–8000)	`1280`
`height`	Viewport height (100–20000)	`1024`
`full_size`	Capture full page	`1`
`format`	Output format	`png` or `jpeg`
`response_type`	Response format	`image` or `json`
`country`	Proxy country	`Germany`
`delay_time`	Wait before capture (ms)	`2000`

Check the full API documentation for all available parameters.

Try Site-Shot free — no registration needed: https://www.site-shot.com/

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