One API for everything you need from the web: screenshots, scraping, content extraction, PDF generation, video recording, and AI-powered page analysis. Real Chromium rendering, 8 SDKs, MCP server for AI tools.
Start Free — 200 captures/monthMost teams integrate separate services for screenshots, web scraping, and PDF generation. Each service means a separate API key, billing account, documentation set, and support channel. SnapAPI consolidates all web capture capabilities into a single platform with unified authentication, shared quota, and consistent response formats.
Screenshot (/v1/screenshot) — Capture any URL as PNG, JPEG, or WebP. Full-page, mobile, retina, ad-blocked, with custom CSS and JavaScript injection. Over 30 device presets for responsive testing.
Scrape (/v1/scrape) — Render JavaScript-heavy pages and return the content as HTML, plain text, or markdown. Stealth mode bypasses anti-bot detection on Cloudflare and similar services.
Extract (/v1/extract) — Pull structured data from pages using CSS selectors. Returns clean JSON with the values you specify, no HTML parsing required on your end.
PDF (/v1/pdf) — Convert URLs to print-quality PDFs with configurable page size, margins, headers, footers, and background printing. Uses Chromium's native print engine.
Video (/v1/video) — Record browser sessions as MP4 video. Navigate pages, scroll, interact with elements, and capture the full visual experience.
Analyze (/v1/analyze) — Send page content to an LLM with a custom prompt. Get AI-generated structured analysis, summaries, or classifications. BYOK mode lets you use your own OpenAI or Anthropic key.
SnapAPI uses Chromium — the same engine behind Google Chrome — to render every page. JavaScript executes fully, CSS animations settle, web fonts download, lazy-loaded images appear. The capture reflects exactly what a real user sees in their browser, not a simplified HTTP response.
This matters for modern web applications built with React, Vue, Angular, Next.js, and other JavaScript frameworks that render content client-side. Static HTTP scrapers see only an empty shell. SnapAPI renders the complete page including data fetched via AJAX, dynamically injected components, and interactive widget states.
Each capture runs in an isolated browser context. No cookies, sessions, or state carry over between requests. This ensures clean, reproducible captures and meets data minimization requirements for regulated industries.
SnapAPI provides official SDKs for JavaScript, Python, Go, PHP, Swift, Kotlin, Java, and C# — all maintained at github.com/Sleywill. Each SDK wraps the HTTP API with language-idiomatic types, error handling, and async support. Install via npm, pip, go get, or your platform's package manager and make your first capture in under five minutes.
The MCP server (snapapi-mcp on npm, v3.2.0) connects SnapAPI to AI coding environments: Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, and Zed. Nine tools are exposed — screenshot, scrape, extract, pdf, video, analyze, ping, get_usage, and list_devices. Your AI assistant can capture screenshots, extract data, and generate PDFs from natural language prompts directly in your editor.
Authentication uses the X-Api-Key header with your API key (format: sk_live_xxx). The key is generated in the dashboard after registration at snapapi.pics. For programmatic access, store it in an environment variable and reference it in your code rather than hardcoding it in source files.
All six endpoints share the same authentication method, rate limits, and quota. A capture from any endpoint — screenshot, scrape, extract, PDF, video, or analyze — deducts one unit from your monthly allocation. This unified model simplifies billing and capacity planning compared to services that meter each capability separately.
Anti-bot systems deployed by Cloudflare, Imperva, DataDome, and PerimeterX detect headless browser automation through fingerprinting: navigator.webdriver property, WebGL renderer strings, canvas noise patterns, and plugin arrays. Standard Chromium screenshots fail on protected pages because these signals reveal the automated context.
SnapAPI's stealth mode suppresses these automation signals at the browser level. Enable it with "stealth": true in any request body. The browser presents as a standard user session — navigator properties, fingerprinting responses, and plugin arrays all match a genuine Chrome installation.
For pages that restrict access by geography, proxy routing through residential IP addresses in specific countries is available on Pro and Business plans. Request screenshots as they appear from the United States, Europe, Asia, or other regions without deploying infrastructure in those locations.
Social preview image generation, visual regression testing in CI/CD pipelines, competitive monitoring dashboards, compliance archiving, lead enrichment through website data extraction, dynamic PDF invoice and report generation, email newsletter preview rendering, and AI-powered content classification are the most common production use cases across SnapAPI customers.
The free tier at 200 captures per month with no credit card covers evaluation and small-scale use. Starter ($19/month, 5,000), Pro ($79/month, 50,000), and Business ($299/month, 500,000) plans scale with your needs. All plans include stealth mode, ad blocking, cookie banner dismissal, and full access to every endpoint.
Running headless Chromium yourself means managing browser processes, memory limits (each tab consumes 100–300 MB), crash recovery, Chromium version updates, and security patches. On serverless platforms, the Chromium binary exceeds deployment size limits without special packaging. Container deployments require careful resource allocation to prevent browser instances from starving other services.
SnapAPI absorbs all of this infrastructure complexity. Your application sends HTTP requests and receives structured responses. Browser pool scaling, crash recovery, memory management, and Chromium updates happen transparently. Your team ships features instead of debugging browser process leaks.
For high-volume workflows — site audits, competitive monitoring, automated reporting — send concurrent API calls using async primitives in your language. Python asyncio, Node.js Promise.all, Go goroutines, and Rust tokio tasks all provide efficient concurrency patterns. Monitor rate limit headers to throttle before hitting limits.
The webhook_url parameter enables push-based async delivery. SnapAPI posts the capture result to your endpoint when rendering completes, freeing your client from holding the connection open. This is the most efficient pattern for serverless architectures where function execution time is billed.
Pricing is straightforward: free tier at 200 captures per month with no credit card. Starter $19/month (5,000 captures), Pro $79/month (50,000), Business $299/month (500,000). All captures across all endpoints share the same quota. Sign up at snapapi.pics.
Enable ad blocking with "block_ads": true to remove advertising elements before capture. This produces cleaner screenshots for visual testing, archival purposes, and thumbnail generation. Cookie consent banners are dismissed automatically with "hide_cookie_banners": true — essential for clean captures of European websites.
Device emulation with over 30 presets covers the latest smartphones, tablets, and desktop configurations. Each preset configures the correct viewport dimensions, device pixel ratio, and user agent string. Combine with full_page: true to capture the complete mobile rendering of any page.
Custom CSS and JavaScript injection run before capture, enabling you to modify page appearance, hide elements, expand collapsed sections, or trigger specific page states. These parameters work across all endpoints — inject CSS before a screenshot, scrape, extract, PDF, or video capture.
SnapAPI renders every page in an isolated, ephemeral browser context. No session state, cookies, or data persists between requests. This isolation ensures reproducible captures and meets data minimization requirements for regulated industries processing web content at scale.
Registration takes 30 seconds at snapapi.pics. Verify your email, generate an API key from the dashboard, and your first capture takes a single curl command or SDK call. The free tier includes 200 captures per month across all six endpoints with no credit card required and no feature restrictions.
The API documentation at snapapi.pics/docs.html includes working code examples for every endpoint in every supported language. Each example is copy-paste ready — replace the API key placeholder with your key and execute. Response schemas are documented with field descriptions, data types, and example values.
For AI-powered development workflows, install the MCP server with npx snapapi-mcp and set your API key as the SNAPAPI_API_KEY environment variable. Your AI coding assistant gains immediate access to all web capture capabilities through natural language prompts — no manual API calls or SDK imports needed.
Support is available through the chat widget on snapapi.pics or via email. Feature requests and bug reports are tracked publicly on GitHub at github.com/Sleywill.