Comparisons

Alternatives to Urlbox

Since 2012, Urlbox has replaced unreliable, inaccurate and inconsistent screenshoting solutions for developers like you.

Alternatives

Software

There are some wonderful open source packages for taking screenshots. Urlbox has tried them all. We've used a few of them to power our rendering engine. Many Urlbox customers came to us after stuggling to maintain and scale their own solutions.

Puppeteer

A Node library which provides a high-level API to control headless Chrome or Chromium. Maintained by the Chrome DevTools team.

See in-depth comparison

PhantomJS

A headless web browser scriptable with JavaScript. Development has been suspended since early 2018.

See in-depth comparison

Alternatives

Services

It's easier than ever to start a screenshoting service. We see new apps pop up on ProductHunt every month. Sadly few figure out how to be accurate and consistent in the long term. Many disappear or become unreliable when their makers get bored or overwhelmed. A handful have survived for more than a couple of years.

URL2PNG

The first good screenshot API. It set the bar when it launched in 2010. It continues to be the most well known.

See in-depth comparison

Screenshotlayer

One of a diverse range of 13 apilayer APIs. apilayer is just one of 24 Idera, Inc. brands.

See in-depth comparison

About Urlbox

We’re profitable, privately owned, and we're in this for the long haul. Since 2012, we’ve generated hundreds of millions of screenshots for companies of all sizes.

Learn more about us

Urlbox's support of emojis was a big signal that it could replace our own service. It was a simple replacement - a real success story for us.

Read the full story
Jānis Peisenieks

Jānis Peisenieks

HO Engineering

Using Urlbox, we've scaled our volume to over 5 times what we were. We’re confident that Urlbox will continue to produce great results as we grow.

Read the full story
Andy Croll

Andy Croll

CTO

See all customer stories

Examples

See how easy our screenshot API is

Whichever language or framework you're using, we have example code to turn your URLs into images.

  • Node.js
  • Ruby
  • PHP
  • Python
  • Java
  • C#
See documentation
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// npm install urlbox --save

import Urlbox from 'urlbox';

// Plugin your API key and secret
const urlbox = Urlbox(YOUR_API_KEY, YOUR_API_SECRET);

// Set your options
const options = {
  url: 'github.com',
  thumb_width: 600,
  format: 'jpg',
  quality: 80
};

const imgUrl = urlbox.generateRenderLink(options);
// https://api.urlbox.io/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/TOKEN/jpg?url=github.com&thumb_width=600&quality=80

// Now set it as the src in an img tag to render the screenshot
<img src={imgUrl} />

Over 50% of our customers built their own microservice... before switching to us

If you're comfortable with JavaScript, DIY screenshot APIs are easier to get started with than they used to be.

Urlbox has been through a few iterations over the years. We started off in 2012 using Node.js v0.6. Today it is still mostly written in JavaScript - and increasingly in TypeScript.

For the rendering engine, we started off using PhantomJS, then moved through various projects - webkit2png, QtWebkit and Electron - before settling down with headless Chrome/Chromium (via Puppeteer).

There are loads of website screenshot APIs. Urlbox has been focused on being the best since 2012

Urlbox's screenshots are considered the most accurate and high quality of any screenshot service.

The Urlbox team sweats the small stuff, ensuring that fonts and emojis render correctly. We cringe with you at full page website screenshots with repeating scrollbars and ugly horizontal seams. Other APIs struggle to handle newer CSS features such as Flexbox, Grid and slower loading WebGL pages.

"It would have been so cumbersome to implement a service of our own to take screenshots. Urlbox's API is so straightforward, and the live preview is cool. I can play around with the parameters and see it do what I need it to do."

Matthias Wagner

Matthias Wagner, CEO Flux

So what sets Urlbox apart from other APIs?

Here are six ways that Urlbox outperforms other screen capture APIs. See all features

Retina Images

Render images at 2x resolution and beyond.

Block Ads & Popups

Don't let ads and popups ruin your screenshots.

Auto-Accept Cookies

No more cookie banners in your screenshots.

Bypass Captchas

Get around captchas and other anti-bot measures.

Custom Proxy

Use your own proxy to access websites behind a firewall.

Multi-Platform

Use with your favorite language.

Other APIs look and feel dated

You'll find Urlbox's dashboard and documentation fresh and regularly updated.

Choose your render mode

With Urlbox

With Urlbox you can preview all available API options and check API usage on our modern dashboard.

With Other APIs

With other APIs, you'll feel like you've stepped into a computer history museum.

More output formats

With Urlbox

With Urlbox, you can render screenshots as PNG, JPEG, WEBP, AVIF, SVG, PDF, and even HTML.

With Other APIs

With other APIs, you can only render in one or two formats.

Delay settings

With Urlbox

With Urlbox, you can ensure a screenshot is only taken when a certain element is either in the DOM, or has left the DOM. Very useful if a web page has lazy loading, and you want to make sure spinners are gone before generating a screenshot.

With Other APIs

With other APIs, the burden is on the page you're screenshotting - which is often out of your control.

Request options

With Urlbox

With Urlbox, you have all the power you need to set headers, proxies and user agents. You can even fail an API request if certain elements are present (or not present) in the DOM. That means they won't count against your monthly quota!

With Other APIs

With other APIs, you pay for just a handful of options - regardless of whether or not they actually work.

Support Example

Screenshot Specialists at hand

Exceptional support

Sadly, you'll hear many complaints about the level of support from other screenshot APIs - you only have to look at their Twitter feed.

Priority support really does mean priority support at Urlbox.

With Urlbox, you'll rarely have to wait for a whole business day - we'll usually get back to you within the hour!

We're in this for the long haul

Urlbox's founder Chris has been full-time on the business for over 5 years. Urlbox is proudly profitable, and has been for years. It's a world away from the neglected side-projects so many of our customers have previously experienced.

Free Trial

Ready to start rendering?

Designers, law firms and infrastructure engineers trust Urlbox to accurately and securely convert HTML to images at scale. Experience it for yourself.

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