Compare / server-side API
screen2api vs Urlbox
A mature server-side screenshot API: send a URL, their rendering cluster loads it in a real browser and returns the image or PDF.
Where Urlbox is the better choice
Genuinely — if any of these is your requirement, use them.
- Captures any public URL with no code embedded in the target site — competitor pages, article archives, sites you do not control.
- Built for scheduled and bulk rendering: their cluster does the work, your infrastructure does nothing.
- Long-established, with a 7-day trial and a stated money-back guarantee.
- The job is screenshotting URLs you do not own — monitoring, archiving, thumbnails of arbitrary sites.
- Captures run on a schedule with no user present.
Where screen2api differs
Their browser or your user's browser
A server-side renderer loads the URL in its own session — it sees the logged-out page. Capturing what your actual user is looking at (their data, their dark mode, their half-scrolled table) means either shipping them your users' credentials or rendering in the user's own browser. The SDK does the latter: the capture is the screen as the user sees it, because it is taken there.
What happens before upload
Because the capture exists in the user's browser first, the user can annotate it and redact it — with pixels destroyed before anything is encoded — and nothing leaves the page until they confirm. A server-side render has no user in the loop at all.
The pricing shapes differ at volume
Urlbox's published tiers work out between roughly $6.60 and $9.80 per thousand renders; screen2api's Pro plan is $49 for 25,000 captures — about $1.96 per thousand — because rendering happens in your users' browsers rather than on a server farm we bill you for. Their model is the right one for the jobs above; it is priced like the server fleet it runs on.
Published pricing, side by side
Urlbox's figures read from their pricing page on 23 August 2026. They may have changed since — check before deciding.
Urlbox
- Lo-Fi · up to 2,000 renders$19/mo
- Hi-Fi · up to 5,000 renders$49/mo
- Ultra · up to 15,000 renders$99/mo
- Business · $3 per 1,000 rendersfrom $498/mo
screen2api
- Free · 500 captures/mo$0
- Pro · 25,000 captures/mo$49/mo
- Business · 100,000 captures/mo$199/mo
A capture is one render, however many formats it returns. Full pricing
Try the capture on your own page
The playground runs the real SDK on a real page — no account, and the free tier is 500 captures a month when you're ready.