Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

ApiFlash VS Urlbox.io

Compare ApiFlash VS Urlbox.io and see what are their differences

ApiFlash logo ApiFlash

ApiFlash is a powerful serverless screenshot API built with Chromium and AWS Lambda. It can easily scale to millions of screenshots per day and has an ever growing number of satisfied big clients.

Urlbox.io logo Urlbox.io

Screenshot full page websites in retina resolution with Urlbox.io screenshot as a service API. Urlbox is the best provider of automated website screenshots offering many unique options and features.
  • ApiFlash Landing page
    Landing page //
    2020-09-18

ApiFlash is loaded with nice features to make sure you are able to make the pixel perfect screenshots you need to make. Full page screenshots, true IP-geolocated screenshots, proxies, user-agent, viewport dimensions ...

  • Urlbox.io Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-03

Urlbox.io

Website
urlbox.com
$ Details
paid Free Trial $29.0 / Monthly (5,000 requests)
Platforms
REST API Wordpress JavaScript Web Node JS Python PHP Ruby Laravel
Release Date
2013 March

ApiFlash features and specs

  • High-Quality Screenshots
    ApiFlash provides full-page, high-resolution screenshots of web pages, ensuring clarity and detail which is ideal for presentations or documentation.
  • Developer-Friendly
    With a simple REST API, it is easy to integrate ApiFlash into applications, allowing developers to automate the screenshot generation process efficiently.
  • Customizable Options
    ApiFlash offers various customization options such as viewport size, device type, and delay settings, enabling users to capture screenshots exactly as needed.
  • Global Datacenter Locations
    Screenshots can be taken from multiple locations around the world, which helps in testing geolocation-specific content.
  • Reliable and Fast
    ApiFlash boasts a robust infrastructure that ensures quick and reliable screenshot generation without significant downtimes.

Possible disadvantages of ApiFlash

  • Cost
    While there is a free tier, advanced features and higher usage are locked behind a subscription, which could be a limiting factor for smaller projects or individual developers.
  • Rate Limits
    ApiFlash imposes rate limits on how many screenshots can be generated within a given time period, potentially impacting users who require high-volume usage.
  • Dependency on External Service
    Relying on an external service for screenshots can pose risks if the service experiences downtime or changes that disrupt functionality.
  • Privacy Concerns
    Screenshots of certain web pages might include sensitive information, raising potential privacy or security issues when relying on a third-party provider.

Urlbox.io features and specs

  • High-Quality Screenshots
    Urlbox.io provides high-resolution screenshots of web pages, ensuring clarity and detail for various uses such as presentations and reports.
  • Responsive Design Testing
    The service allows testing of web pages on different devices and screen sizes, which is useful for developers looking to ensure responsive design.
  • Customizable Options
    Urlbox.io offers various customization options, such as viewport dimensions, full-page capture, and custom delay, giving users flexibility to capture screenshots as per their needs.
  • API Integration
    The integration with APIs is straightforward, enabling seamless automation of screenshot capture for developers within their applications.
  • Supports Various Formats
    Screenshots can be exported in multiple formats, including PNG and JPEG, making it adaptable to user preferences and requirements.

Possible disadvantages of Urlbox.io

  • Cost
    The service can become expensive for heavy users or businesses needing a large number of screenshots regularly, which may limit its accessibility for smaller projects.
  • Rendering Issues
    Some users have reported occasional rendering issues where web pages do not appear exactly as they do in browsers, which can be problematic for precise design work.
  • Limited Offline Functionality
    Urlbox.io primarily operates online, which means it is dependent on an internet connection and cannot be used in offline environments.
  • Learning Curve
    While the API is powerful, there is a learning curve for users unfamiliar with integrating such tools, potentially requiring additional time to adapt.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to ApiFlash and Urlbox.io)
Website Screenshots
43 43%
57% 57
Screenshots
42 42%
58% 58
Developer Tools
61 61%
39% 39
APIs
51 51%
49% 49

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, ApiFlash should be more popular than Urlbox.io. It has been mentiond 5 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

ApiFlash mentions (5)

  • Should you add screenshots to documentation?
    I built a screenshot API called ApiFlash. https://apiflash.com Quite a few of my clients use it to add "always up to date" screenshots to their documentation. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Any selfhosted alternative to ApiFlash?
    Hello. I'm currently using apiflash to grab pictures from several sites and I love its simplicity (a REST-API you can invoke from curl and build your request on their site). The only downside is that their free plan is a little scarce and only allows 100 requests per month. Do you know of any selfhosted alternative? Source: almost 3 years ago
  • A curated list of awesome things related to Vue.js
    ApiFlash - A Chrome based screenshot API built on top of AWS Lambda for Developers. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago
  • Free for dev - list of software (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.)
    ApiFlash — A screenshot API based on Aws Lambda and Chrome. Handles full page, capture timing, viewport dimensions, ... - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago
  • How to crawl articles and automatically reformat as images
    You could also use a service like ApiFlash to generate screenshots of any webpage you want. Source: about 4 years ago

Urlbox.io mentions (3)

  • Self-hosted, simple web browser service – send URL, get screenshots
    If you’re worried about the security risks, edge cases, maintenance pain and scaling challenges of self hosting there are various solid hosted alternatives: - https://browserless.io - low level browser control - https://scrapingbee.com - scraping specialists - https://urlbox.com - screenshot specialists* They’re all profitable and have been around for years so you can depend on the businesses and the tech. *... - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Web Scraping in Python – The Complete Guide
    This is how I do it. I send the URLs I want scraped to Urlbox[0] it renders the pages saves HTML (and screenshot and metadata) to my S3 bucket[1]. I get a webhook[2] when it's ready for me to process. I prefer to use Ruby so Nokogiri[3] is the tool I use for scraping step. This has been particularly useful when I've want to scrape some pages live from a web app and don't want to manage running Puppeteer or... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Auto Screenshot URL's
    Hi there, I run urlbox.io, which is a screenshot API that allows clicking elements, waiting for elements, injecting custom JS/CSS etc. Source: over 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing ApiFlash and Urlbox.io, you can also consider the following products

Screenshot Machine - Screenshot machine is an online website capturing service. Creates a screenshot or thumbnail of any online web page in couple of seconds for free.

ScreenshotAPI.net - Generate beautiful website screenshots using our fast website screenshot API.

URL2PNG - Screenshots as a Service. Capture snapshots of any website, right in your app, quickly and reliably.

Capture by Techulus - Effortlessly capture screenshots, create PDFs, scrape content, and extract metadata from any website with our state-of-the-art API. We offer blazing-fast performance and reliability, giving you the best user experience possible.

GrabzIt - A reliable free API and online tool to convert webpages, URL's and HTML into images or PDF's. As well as a Web Scraper to scrape data directly from the web.

CaptureKit.dev - The Ultimate Web Scraping API for Developers