Generate OG / social-preview images on the fly (screenshots-as-a-service)

#webdev #api #node #showdev

Dynamic OG images and "preview this URL" thumbnails are a pain to self-host: you ship Playwright/Chromium, fight cold starts on serverless, and watch memory spike. For most use cases a hosted endpoint is enough.

curl --request GET \
  --url 'https://website-screenshot-api8.p.rapidapi.com/api/v1/screenshot?url=https://example.com&format=png&full_page=true' \
  --header 'x-rapidapi-key: YOUR_RAPIDAPI_KEY' \
  --header 'x-rapidapi-host: website-screenshot-api8.p.rapidapi.com'

Full-page or viewport, PNG/JPEG/WebP. There's a POST /api/v1/screenshot with the full option set (dimensions, delay, format) when you need more control.

Free tier on RapidAPI: https://rapidapi.com/danieligel/api/website-screenshot-api8

I built this to render social-preview cards without a headless cluster. What are you generating screenshots for — previews, monitoring, thumbnails?