ScreenshotAPI.net is the rare render API that genuinely schedules. Cron expressions from every minute upward, executed server-side, with a dashboard to start and stop jobs and an email when a capture lands. That is more than most of this category ships, and their cron floor is lower than ours. Then read the note on their own scheduling page: deleting a job permanently removes all related screenshots, and download anything important first.
No retention period appears anywhere on their pricing page either. Ours is 48 months on every plan including the free one, and the archive is held separately from the config that produced it, so cancelling the schedule does not cancel the evidence. On price they are cheaper at 1,000, cheaper at 10,000 by ninety-nine cents, and cheaper at exactly 100,000. Those three rows are theirs in section 03.
ScreenshotAPI.net pricing, feature table, and scheduling documentation verified 28 July 2026.
Start with credit, because it is deserved. Their scheduling product takes preset intervals or a raw cron expression, runs it server-side with no browser tab to keep open, and gives you start, stop, delete, and a view of every capture. Their own examples run from every minute to monthly. Every minute is faster than our five-minute floor, and section 07 gives them that row.
What is missing is a lifetime and independence. Their scheduling page carries its own warning: deleting a job permanently removes all related screenshots, so download the important images before deletion. Their pricing FAQ says data is not stored longer than necessary. Neither of those is a period you could put in a compliance answer, and the first one means the record and the monitoring share a single delete button.
The second structural limit is per job. Their own comparison of manual, scheduled, and bulk capture puts pages per run at one for a scheduled job, and thousands for a bulk upload, which is the one mode that does not repeat. So a hundred pages on a schedule is a hundred jobs to create and a hundred to maintain.
Here, a config is a URL plus an interval, created one at a time in the app or in bulk over the API, and the captures it produces stay for 48 months whether or not the config still exists. Delete the schedule and the dated history is still there.
| Their plan | Shots / mo | Req / min | Timeout |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free trial $0, 7 days | 100 | — | — |
| Essential $9 / mo | 1,000 | 20 | 30s |
| Startup $29 / mo | 10,000 | 40 | 60s |
| Business $175 / mo | 100,000 | 80 | 100s |
| Enterprise custom | custom | — | — |
Six rows go to them, and two of those describe things we do not offer at any price: video and animated output, and writes to your own cloud bucket. Three of the rest are price, and the sixth is bulk URL uploads, where our path is different rather than absent. Scheduling itself is close to parity, and their cron floor is lower.
| Capability | PagePixels | ScreenshotAPI.net |
|---|---|---|
| What the price meters | Screenshot capture and archive | Screenshots rendered |
| Published plan rungs | Nine, from 3,000 to 200,000 | Three, plus custom: 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 |
| Entry paid price | $16.99 / mo for 3,000 screenshots | $9 / mo for 1,000 screenshots. This is theirs |
| Cost at 10,000 a month | $29.99 / mo | $29 / mo on Startup. Theirs, by 99 cents |
| Cost at 15,000 a month | $49.99 / mo | $175 / mo. Startup stops at 10,000 |
| Cost at 50,000 a month | $99.99 / mo | $175 / mo. The next rung after 10,000 |
| Cost at 100,000 a month | $199.99 / mo | $175 / mo on Business. This is theirs |
| Above 100,000 | $399.99 at 200,000 | Enterprise, no published price |
| Free plan | 25 screenshots / mo, no card, every feature | 7-day trial, 100 screenshots, all features* |
| Recurring schedule | Built in, 5 minutes to monthly, every plan | Built in. Cron expressions, every minute upward |
| Pages per scheduled job | One URL per config, unlimited configs | One page per job, per their own comparison |
| Change detection | Every plan, with region exclusions | Not listed on their pricing table* |
| What the alert means | Fires when the page differs from last time | Email the moment a scheduled capture is taken |
| How long captures are kept | 48 months, every plan, no upper bound | No retention period published |
| If you delete the schedule | The archive stays. History outlives the config | Their note: deleting a job removes all its screenshots |
| Repeat captures of one URL | Every run stored and dated | Cached unless you ask for fresh renders only* |
| Export to your own storage | Not offered. Dropbox, Slack, and webhooks instead | S3, Google Cloud, Azure. This is theirs* |
| Video and animated output | Not offered | MP4, WebM, GIF from Startup, $29. This is theirs |
| PDF and WebP output | PNG, JPEG, WebP, and PDF, every plan | URL and HTML to PDF, WebP on every plan. Parity |
| Rendered HTML extraction | Whole page or one selector, every plan | Text and HTML extraction on every plan. Parity |
| Bulk URL upload | Configs created in bulk over the API or MCP | 200 URLs at once, 1,000 on Startup. This is theirs |
| Proxy support | Not sold as an add-on. 150+ locations included | Startup and above, $29. Not on Essential |
| Choice of capture location | 150+ countries, states, and cities, every plan | Not on their pricing table. Described in their blog* |
| Support response time | Same support on every plan, free included | 2 business days, 1 day, then 8 hours at $175 |
| MCP server for agents | Hosted, OAuth 2.1, the whole API as tools | None found* |
ScreenshotAPI.net prices, per-plan limits, and feature gating verified 28 July 2026 against their pricing page in both the monthly and the yearly view, plus their scheduling product page and FAQ. This page is monitored for changes by PagePixels, so when their pricing moves, this table gets corrected.
Monthly billing on both sides. They are cheaper at 1,000, at 10,000, and at exactly 100,000. Everything between 15,000 and 70,000 is ours, and the reason is one missing rung rather than anything clever we did.
| Workload | Shots / mo | ScreenshotAPI.net | PagePixels | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 33 pages, captured daily | 1,000 | $9 (Essential) | $16.99 | They win by $7.99. Our smallest plan is 3,000 |
| 100 pages, captured daily | 3,000 | $29 (Startup) | $16.99 | We win by $12.01. Essential stops at 1,000 |
| 330 pages, captured daily | 10,000 | $29 (Startup) | $29.99 | They win by $0.99. The closest row on this page |
| 500 pages, captured daily | 15,000 | $175 (Business) | $49.99 | We win by $125.01. Nothing sits between the two |
| 42 pages, captured hourly | 30,000 | $175 (Business) | $59.99 | We win by $115.01 |
| 69 pages, captured hourly | 50,000 | $175 (Business) | $99.99 | We win by $75.01 |
| 97 pages, captured hourly | 70,000 | $175 (Business) | $139.99 | We win by $35.01. The gap is closing |
| 139 pages, captured hourly | 100,000 | $175 (Business) | $199.99 | They win by $24.99, at full use of their top plan |
Their published ladder is 1,000, then 10,000, then 100,000. At 10,000 you land on Startup exactly and they win the row by ninety-nine cents. At 10,001 the only plan that covers you is Business at $175, so the unit cost jumps from $2.90 per thousand to $17.50, and at 15,000 it is $11.67, which is worse per thousand than their own $9 entry plan. That penalty shrinks as you climb and disappears near the top: at 70,000 Business is $2.50 per thousand against our $2.00, and at 100,000 it is $1.75 against our $2.00, which is the row they win. Above that they publish no price at all.
The volume that falls in their gap, priced four ways.
| Business, the only plan that covers it | $11.67 |
|---|---|
| Their Essential plan, per thousand | $9.00 |
| Their Startup plan at full use | $2.90 |
| PagePixels 15,000, per thousand | $3.33 |
Buying their top plan to cover 15,000 costs more per thousand than their cheapest plan does. That is the shape of the ladder, not a criticism of the renderer.
Three rows, and the middle one is close enough to be a rounding error. At 1,000 screenshots Essential is $9 and our floor is $16.99 for 3,000, so if a thousand a month is the whole job, buy from them.
At 10,000 it is $29 against $29.99. Ninety-nine cents, in their favour, and we would rather print the number than describe it as competitive. At exactly 100,000 their Business plan is $175 against our $199.99, a $24.99 win at full use of their top published plan.
One more that is not about money: their cron accepts every minute, and our floor is five. If you need a capture more often than that, no amount of archive is going to make up for it.
Read their pricing card literally: seven days, 100 screenshots, all features included. Their own getting-started guide describes the same thing as a free plan. We have flagged that in section 02 rather than picking a side, because either way the number is 100 captures and then a card. Ours is 25 screenshots a month, every month, with no card and no clock.
Above the trial, three things are gated at Startup at $29: proxy support, scrolling capture, and video or animated output. On Essential a bulk run stops at 200 URLs and a render must finish inside 30 seconds. Priority support and unlimited bulk are Business at $175, and a dedicated server is not available on any published plan. Their support response time is written into the tiers too: two business days, one business day, then eight hours.
Credit where it is due, and three rows below go to them: scrolling capture, video and animated output, and export straight to your own cloud bucket. Their PDF, WebP, and extraction rows are matched rather than conceded, because those are on every plan here too. What they publish and we do not is the moving-image family and the bucket write.
| Capability | ScreenshotAPI.net | Ours |
|---|---|---|
| A free allowance that renews monthly | trial only 7 days, 100 shots | 25 / mo |
| A stated retention period | not published at any tier | 48 months |
| An archive that survives the job | not published at any tier | free |
| Proxy support | $29 Startup | free |
| Scrolling capture | $29 Startup | not offered |
| Video and animated output | $29 Startup | not offered |
| Export to S3, Google Cloud, Azure | $9 Essential | not offered |
| A bulk run over 200 URLs | $29 Startup, 1,000 | free |
| Priority support | $175 Business | free |
This is the section where most comparisons on this site say the competitor has no scheduler. Not here. Theirs is cron-based, server-side, manageable from a dashboard, and it emails you. So the difference is not whether captures repeat. It is what the email means.
Their own words: they notify you by email the moment your scheduled screenshot is captured. That fires on capture. Ours fires on difference. A daily job on a page that changes twice a year is 365 emails on one side and two on the other, and on this side you can exclude the regions that always move so the two you get are the two that matter.
Their integration list is genuinely good and worth saying out loud: Zapier, Make, n8n, Google Sheets, viaSocket, and a plain REST API. Ours is on the free plan in full, and so is the hosted MCP server, which means an agent can create a config, trigger a capture, and read back what changed next month without a paid tier in the way.
We searched their site, docs, and general search on 28 July 2026 for an MCP server and found none. That is a negative search result rather than a denial, and it is the kind of thing that changes, so we re-check it quarterly.
On their side, proxy support, scrolling, and video start at $29, priority support at $175, and the free tier runs for seven days. Here the list below is the free plan, and the paid plans differ from it only in how many screenshots you get.
Every capture stored, dated, and openable for four years while the account stays active, with no cap on archive size. Their screenshots are stored too, and well, but no period is published and their own note says deleting the job deletes them.
Delete a screenshot config here and its captures stay in the archive, because the history belongs to the account rather than to the schedule. On their side those two share one delete button, which is why their page tells you to download first.
No credit card, no seven days, and every feature on the list. Their entry offer is 100 screenshots inside a seven-day trial, after which the cheapest plan is $9 for 1,000.
Compare this capture to the last one, exclude the regions that always move, and get told by email, Slack, or webhook when something real changes. Their scheduled email tells you a capture happened, which on a daily job is an email a day.
Choose the country, state, or city a page is captured from, on any plan. Their pricing table lists no location option, and the proxy support you would need for it starts at $29.
Thirteen action types run in the order you list them: log in, fill the form, choose the dropdown, click through, wait for the element, then capture. Nothing on their site lists an equivalent ordered sequence.
Five cases, and three of them describe things we do not do at any price. This is the longest such list on the site, which is the honest consequence of comparing against a product that overlaps ours rather than one that only renders.
Their scheduler takes raw cron expressions and their own examples include one that runs every minute. Our floor is five minutes on every plan, so for anything faster than that they are simply the right tool and no amount of retention makes up for it.
MP4, WebM, and GIF output and scrolling capture both start at Startup at $29, and we publish neither at any price. PDF, WebP, and HTML extraction are not on this list, because those are on every plan here as well. It is the moving-image work that decides this one.
Their feature table lists S3, Google Cloud, and Azure integrations on all three published plans. We do not write to object storage at any price. Captures live in our 48-month archive with links, and go out to Dropbox, Slack, or any webhook, which is not the same thing.
Essential is $9 for 1,000 screenshots. Our smallest paid plan is $16.99 for 3,000, so at genuinely low volume they are cheaper and the free trial lets you check the renderer first. At 10,000 they are still ahead, by ninety-nine cents.
Bulk upload takes a list and runs it: 200 URLs at once on Essential, 1,000 on Startup, unlimited on Business. Our bulk path is scripted config creation over the API, which suits a standing list of pages rather than a one-off run of thousands.
Export before you delete. Their note is explicit that removing a scheduled job removes every screenshot it took, so whatever history you want to keep has to come down first. After that, the move is one config per URL and one interval per config.
Honest notes: at 1,000, at 10,000, and at exactly 100,000 screenshots a month they are cheaper, and if your cron runs more often than every five minutes or your captures have to land in your own S3 bucket, staying is the right call.
It depends entirely on volume, because their ladder has three rungs and ours has nine. At 1,000 screenshots they are $9 against our $16.99. At 10,000 they are $29 against our $29.99, so they win by ninety-nine cents. At 15,000 their only option is the $175 Business plan against our $49.99, and that gap stays in our favour through 30,000, 50,000, and 70,000. At exactly 100,000 they are $175 against our $199.99 and the row goes back to them. Above that they publish no price.
Yes, and a good one, which is unusual for a render API. Preset intervals or a raw cron expression, executed server-side, with start, stop, and delete from a dashboard and an email when a capture lands. Their examples go down to every minute, which is faster than our five-minute floor. What we could not find is a published retention period, an alert that fires on change rather than on capture, or more than one page per scheduled job.
No period is published on their pricing page. Their scheduling page says screenshots are securely stored and accessible for review, comparison, and download, and it also warns that deleting a job permanently removes all related screenshots and that you should download important images first. Their FAQ says data is not stored longer than necessary. Ours is a number: 48 months on every plan including free, for as long as the account stays active, with no cap on archive size, and the archive is independent of the config that produced it.
Their pricing card reads seven days, 100 screenshots, all features included, which is a trial. Their own getting-started guide describes the same offer as a free plan giving 100 free screenshots on signup. We cannot reconcile the two from outside, so we have used the card on the page you buy from. Ours is 200 screenshots every month with no credit card and no expiry.
Proxy support, scrolling capture, and video or animated output all start at Startup, $29. On Essential a bulk run stops at 200 URLs and a render must finish inside 30 seconds. Priority support and unlimited bulk are Business at $175, and a dedicated server is not available on any published plan. Their support response time is tiered too: two business days, one business day, then eight hours. On our side the free plan carries the whole feature list and the paid plans only change the number of screenshots.
We are marking this unverified rather than absent. Their pricing feature table has no diff or change-detection row, and their scheduling page describes comparing captures in the dashboard yourself. That page also carries a comparison chart with a row for detecting page changes over time whose marks we could not read reliably from the page as served, so ask them before you depend on it. On our side, change detection with region exclusions is on every plan, and the alert fires only when the page is different.
Not by default. Their FAQ defines a unique screenshot as the exact URL plus the exact parameters, and says that unless you opt into rendering fresh screenshots only, they will cache. For a dated archive that is the wrong default, so set the fresh flag when you set up the job. We could not confirm from their site whether cached responses count against your quota.
Five things. Cron down to every minute, against our five-minute floor. Video and animated output, and scrolling capture, neither of which we offer at any price. Direct export to S3, Google Cloud, or Azure, which we also do not offer. Bulk URL uploads of up to a thousand at a time. And price at the bottom and the top of the ladder: $9 for 1,000 and $175 at exactly 100,000. PDF and WebP are not on the list, because those are on every plan here too.
Ours is hosted at mcp.pagepixels.com with OAuth 2.1 and exposes the whole API as tools, including the archive and the change notifications. We searched their site, their documentation, and general search on 28 July 2026 and found no MCP server. That is a negative search result rather than a vendor denial, so we re-check it quarterly. Their published integrations are Zapier, Make, n8n, Google Sheets, viaSocket, and the REST API.