How to Capture Website Screenshots with a Simple API Call

Pini Solomon — Fri, 22 May 2026 04:43:54 +0000

Ever needed to generate a screenshot of a webpage programmatically? Whether you're building a link preview feature, monitoring website changes, or generating PDF reports — setting up headless Chrome yourself is a pain.

I built ScreenshotAPI to solve this. One GET request, instant screenshot or PDF back. No browser setup, no Puppeteer dependencies, no infrastructure headaches.

The Problem

If you've tried capturing screenshots programmatically, you know the drill:

Install Puppeteer or Playwright (500MB+ of Chromium)
Handle browser crashes and memory leaks
Deal with timeout issues on slow-loading pages
Manage a browser pool for concurrent requests
Deploy it all on a server with enough RAM

For most use cases, this is massive overkill. You just want an image of a webpage.

The Solution: One API Call

curl "https://screenshotapi5.p.rapidapi.com/v1/screenshot?url=https://github.com" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Host: screenshotapi5.p.rapidapi.com" \
  -o screenshot.png

That's it. You get back a PNG screenshot. No setup, no dependencies.

What You Can Do

1. Website Screenshots

Capture any public webpage as PNG or JPEG:

const axios = require('axios');
const fs = require('fs');

const response = await axios.get('https://screenshotapi5.p.rapidapi.com/v1/screenshot', {
  params: {
    url: 'https://stripe.com',
    width: 1280,
    height: 800,
    format: 'png'
  },
  headers: {
    'X-RapidAPI-Key': 'YOUR_KEY',
    'X-RapidAPI-Host': 'screenshotapi5.p.rapidapi.com'
  },
  responseType: 'arraybuffer'
});

fs.writeFileSync('stripe.png', response.data);

2. Full-Page Screenshots

Capture the entire scrollable page, not just the viewport:

?url=https://example.com&fullPage=true

3. Element Screenshots

Target a specific element with a CSS selector:

?url=https://example.com&selector=.hero-section

4. PDF Generation

Generate a PDF of any webpage:

curl "https://screenshotapi5.p.rapidapi.com/v1/pdf?url=https://example.com&format=A4" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Host: screenshotapi5.p.rapidapi.com" \
  -o page.pdf

5. Custom Viewport & Quality

?url=https://example.com&width=1920&height=1080&format=jpeg&quality=90

Real-World Use Cases

Link Previews: Generate Open Graph images for social sharing
Website Monitoring: Take periodic screenshots to detect visual changes
Automated Reports: Convert dashboards to PDFs for email distribution
Thumbnail Generation: Create preview thumbnails for URL directories
Archiving: Save visual snapshots of web pages for compliance

Full Parameter Reference

Screenshot Endpoint (`GET /v1/screenshot`)

Parameter	Default	Description
`url`	required	URL to capture
`width`	1280	Viewport width in pixels
`height`	800	Viewport height in pixels
`fullPage`	false	Capture full scrollable page
`format`	png	Output format: `png` or `jpeg`
`quality`	80	JPEG quality (1-100)
`delay`	0	Wait time in ms before capture
`selector`	—	CSS selector to capture specific element

PDF Endpoint (`GET /v1/pdf`)

Parameter	Default	Description
`url`	required	URL to capture
`format`	A4	Page format: `A4`, `Letter`, `Legal`
`landscape`	false	Landscape orientation
`printBackground`	true	Include CSS backgrounds
`scale`	1	Scale factor (0.1 to 2)

Pricing

Free: 50 requests/month (great for testing)
Pro: $9/month — 1,000 requests
Ultra: $29/month — 5,000 requests
Mega: $79/month — 25,000 requests

Get Started

Go to ScreenshotAPI on RapidAPI
Subscribe to the free plan
Copy your API key
Start capturing screenshots

It takes about 30 seconds to go from zero to your first screenshot.

Built with Node.js, Playwright, and deployed on Railway. If you have questions or feature requests, reach out through the RapidAPI listing.

DEV Community: Pini Solomon