Why choose
Urlbox vs Screenshotlayer?
Screenshotlayer is just one of 13 apilayer APIs. apilayer is one of 24 Idera, Inc. brands. Urlbox is the website screenshot alternative to Screenshotlayer that's focused on doing one thing well.
Screenshotlayer is part of a portfolio of brands. Urlbox has been focused on screenshots 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. They cringe with you at full page website screenshots with repeating scrollbars and ugly horizontal seams. Screenshotlayer struggles to handle newer CSS features such as Flexbox, Grid and slower loading WebGL pages.
Urlbox is the screenshot API of choice for companies big and small.
Screenshotlayer's experience looks and feels dated
Urlbox keeps their dashboard and documentation fresh.
Choose your render mode
With Urlbox
With Urlbox you can preview all available API options and check API usage on our modern dashboard.
With Screenshotlayer
With Screenshotlayer, 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 Screenshotlayer
With Screenshotlayer, you can render in PNG, JPEG or GIF.
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 Screenshotlayer
With Screenshotlayer, you can only wait for a number of (whole) seconds.
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 Screenshotlayer
With Screenshotlayer, you pay for just 13 options... regardless of whether or not they actually work.
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 usUrlbox'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
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
CTO
So what sets Urlbox apart from Screenshotlayer?
Here are six ways that Urlbox outperforms Screenshotlayer: 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.
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.
"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, CEO Flux
Free Trial
It's easy to switch from Screenshotlayer
Many of the Screenshotlayer options are named the same with Urlbox. The only difference is in how you would generate the token; with Screenshotlayer you use the md5 hash, while wity Urlbox you use the hmac-sha256 method. So what are you waiting for?
7 day free trial.No credit card required.
