How to Capture Website Screenshots with an API in 2025

Capturing website screenshots programmatically is essential for many modern applications — from generating social media previews to building visual regression testing pipelines. In this guide, we'll walk through how to use a screenshot API to capture any webpage as an image with a single HTTP request.

Why Use a Screenshot API?

Running headless browsers locally is fragile and resource-intensive. A screenshot API handles the complexity for you:

• No infrastructure to manage — No Puppeteer, Playwright, or Chrome installations required
• Consistent results — Same rendering engine across every request
• Global edge delivery — Low-latency screenshots from anywhere in the world
• Format flexibility — PNG, JPEG, WebP, and PDF output with a single parameter

Getting Started with PxShot

PxShot is a screenshot API that lets you capture any URL as an image. Here's how to get started:

Step 1: Get Your API Key

Sign up at pxshot.dev/dashboard and create an API key. The free tier includes 100 screenshots per month.

Step 2: Make Your First Request

A basic screenshot request looks like this:

curl "https://pxshot.dev/api/capture?url=https://example.com&api_key=YOUR_KEY"

Step 3: Customize the Output

You can control the viewport size, output format, quality, and more:

curl "https://pxshot.dev/api/capture?url=https://example.com&width=1280&height=720&format=webp&quality=90&api_key=YOUR_KEY"

Code Examples

JavaScript (Node.js / Fetch)

const response = await fetch(
  'https://pxshot.dev/api/capture?url=https://example.com&format=png&api_key=YOUR_KEY'
);
const imageBuffer = await response.arrayBuffer();
// Save to file or process the image

Python

import requests

response = requests.get(
    'https://pxshot.dev/api/capture',
    params={'url': 'https://example.com', 'format': 'png', 'api_key': 'YOUR_KEY'}
)
with open('screenshot.png', 'wb') as f:
    f.write(response.content)

Common Use Cases

• Open Graph previews — Generate dynamic OG images for blog posts and landing pages
• Link previews — Show visual thumbnails of URLs in chat apps and dashboards
• Archival — Capture point-in-time snapshots of pages for compliance or records
• Visual testing — Compare screenshots across deployments to catch regressions

Ready to try it? Get your free API key and start capturing screenshots in under a minute.