How to Capture Webpage Screenshots with an API

Need to turn a URL into an image? Whether you're building social media preview cards, generating PDF reports, monitoring website changes, or creating automated testing screenshots — a screenshot API is the fastest way to do it.

Why Use a Screenshot API?

You could run your own headless browser, but that means managing Chromium installations, handling memory leaks, dealing with timeouts, and scaling infrastructure. A screenshot API handles all of that for you.

Common use cases:

• Social media previews — Generate Open Graph images from any URL
• PDF reports — Convert dashboards or pages to shareable PDFs
• Visual monitoring — Detect when a webpage changes
• Automated testing — Capture screenshots during test runs
• Link previews — Show thumbnail previews in chat apps
• Archiving — Save visual snapshots of web pages over time

Quick Start with cURL

curl -X POST https://api.16761.tech/screenshot \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://github.com"}' \
  -o screenshot.png

That's it. One request, one screenshot.

JavaScript / Node.js Example

const response = await fetch('https://api.16761.tech/screenshot', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_API_KEY',
    'Content-Type': 'application/json'
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    url: 'https://github.com',
    width: 1280,
    height: 800,
    fullPage: true
  })
});

const buffer = await response.arrayBuffer();
fs.writeFileSync('screenshot.png', Buffer.from(buffer));

Python Example

import requests

response = requests.post('https://api.16761.tech/screenshot',
    headers={
        'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_API_KEY',
        'Content-Type': 'application/json'
    },
    json={
        'url': 'https://github.com',
        'width': 1280,
        'fullPage': True
    }
)

with open('screenshot.png', 'wb') as f:
    f.write(response.content)

Advanced Options

Custom Viewport

Capture at any resolution up to 4K:

{"url": "https://example.com", "width": 1920, "height": 1080}

Mobile Screenshots

{"url": "https://example.com", "width": 375, "height": 812}

Full Page Capture

{"url": "https://example.com", "fullPage": true}

Element Selector

Capture a specific element on the page:

{"url": "https://example.com", "selector": "#main-content"}

JPEG with Quality Control

{"url": "https://example.com", "format": "jpeg", "quality": 85}

Wait for Dynamic Content

{"url": "https://example.com", "delay": 2000}

Pricing

Free tier: 100 screenshots per day. Pro: 5,000/day for $19/month. Enterprise: 50,000/day for $99/month.

Also available on RapidAPI. OpenAPI spec.