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.
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
Read the full storyOther solutions would fail under load or go offline and you wouldn't be able to reach them as their support was unresponsive. We've chosen Chris and the Urlbox team to be our experts and they provide us—and thus our customers—with accurate & fast screenshots at a terrific price.
Read the full storyThere are so many screenshot services out there. They're fine if you're just doing thumbnails, you don't really care about quality or configuration options. It didn't take me long to find holes and hit the limitations of every one I tried. Urlbox has every feature I've ever needed to take great screenshots every time.
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.
So what sets Urlbox apart from Screenshotlayer?
Here are six ways that Urlbox outperforms Screenshotlayer:
A better way to take screenshots.
Retina Images
- Render high quality, high-DPI images that look great on retina screens
Block Pop-ups
- Stop annoying pop-ups getting in the way of your screenshots
Click Accept
- Automatically dismiss cookie banners to prevent them spoiling your screenshots
Block Ads
- Prevent ads taking all the attention in your screenshots
Bypass Captchas
- Automatically attempt to solve and bypass any captchas that are shown
Bring Your Own Proxy
- Use a proxy server to prevent sites from blocking your screenshots
Read the full storyIt 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.
Screenshotlayer's experience looks and feels dated
Urlbox keeps their dashboard and documentation fresh
Choose your render mode
With Urlbox, you can preview all available API options and check API usage on a modern dashboard
With Screenshotlayer, you'll feel like you've stepped into a computer history museum
More output formats
With Urlbox, you can render screenshots as PNG, JPEG, WEBP, AVIF, SVG, PDF, and even HTML
With Screenshotlayer, you can render in PNG, JPEG or GIF
Delay settings
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 You can also set a time delay in milliseconds
With Screenshotlayer, you can only wait for a number of (whole) seconds
Request options
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, you pay for just 13 options... regardless of whether or not they actually work
Exceptional support
Sadly, you'll hear many complaints about the level of support from Screenshotlayer and parent brands apilayer and Idera. With millions of users, they're too big to care.
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!
Read the full storyI love the support that Urlbox provides. Normally when I have a new feature request like WebP images or blocking cookie pop-ups, I email support and get a response saying it's already possible - within minutes.
Read the full storyUrlbox'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.
We're in this for the long haul
Look up Urlbox's founder, Chris Roebuck, on LinkedIn.
While Urlbox is small and scrappy, you'll see he's been full-time on the business for over 5 years. Urlbox is proudly profitable. They plan to be in the screenshots business for the long term.
Too many customers have learned the hard way that the alternatives, including Screenshotlayer, seem like neglected side projects.
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-sha1 method. So what are you waiting for?