The most popular screenshot APIs are usually implemented over HTTP. ScreenshotOne is one of them.

Let’s send an example request to ScreenshotOne.com API to generate a screenshot of Apple’s website:

GET https://api.screenshotone.com/take?url=https://apple.com&access_key=<sign up to get your access key>

The resulting image is:

In addition to that, you can render HTML as an image:

GET https://api.screenshotone.com/take?html=<h1>Hello, world!</h1>&access_key=<sign up to get your access key>

Or even render Markdown (# Hello, world!) as an image too:

GET https://api.screenshotone.com/take?markdown=%23%20Hello%2C%20world%21&access_key=<sign up to get your access key>

The resulting image is the same for both requests:

Use cases

There is a ton of ways how screenshot API can be used. Imagination is the only limitation.

Customers of ScreenshotOne use it for:

• generating Open Graph images;
• automating and generating marketing visuals;
• taking website screenshots to share them in website directories; and many more.

Alternatives to a screenshot as a service

One of the most popular alternatives to screenshot APIs is using Puppeteer to render websites and HTML.

Puppeter is a Node library that interacts with browsers that support Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP). It is not only Chrome and Chromium, but Firefox also has partial support of CDP.

When to prefer a screenshot API to alternatives?

In case if you don’t have time and energy to invest in developing screenshot features for your apps, it is better to use a screenshot API and save time.

What is the best screenshot API?

There is a list of the best screenshot APIs compared by features and by pricing.