upAPI vs ScreenshotOne
A screenshot as one call among several, not the whole product.
TL;DR: Is ScreenshotOne or upAPI the better fit?
Pick ScreenshotOne when screenshots are the main job: it has 100 free a month, plans from $17, and on Growth and Scale, scrolling captures and video. Pick upAPI when a screenshot is one call among several, alongside PDF, Markdown and page metadata, on one key and one pooled quota.
How ScreenshotOne charges
100 free screenshots a month, then Basic at $17 (2,000 credits), Growth at $79 (10,000) and Scale at $259 (50,000). One credit buys one output: a screenshot, PDF, scrolling capture or video, when that output is on your plan.
How upAPI charges
Free at $0 with 1,000 weighted units, then $29 for 100,000. A screenshot is 20 units, so the same quota also covers Markdown at 3 units and metadata at 1.
USD 29 / mo · USD 0.29 per 1,000 units · full pricing
Last checked 2026-10-07. ScreenshotOne figures here were read from their own pages on that date. We do not restate a competitor’s number we have not seen ourselves, and where they publish none we say so; if this date has aged, check theirs before ours.
ScreenshotOne and upAPI side by side
| Feature | ScreenshotOne | upAPI |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | 100 free screenshots a month, then Basic $17 (2,000 credits, 40 request starts a minute), Growth $79 (10,000, 80) and Scale $259 (50,000, 150). Prices exclude VAT, annual billing includes two months free, and one credit buys one output. | Free at $0, then Starter $29 for 100,000 weighted units a month, Pro $99 for 500,000 and Scale $499 for 5,000,000. Each operation declares its own unit cost, and the quota is pooled across the catalog. |
| Free tier | 100 free screenshots a month, with no credit card. | The Free plan: 1,000 weighted units a month across every public operation, which is 50 screenshots at 20 units each, with no trial clock. |
| Endpoints | Outputs listed on their information page: screenshots, PDFs, scrolling captures, video and GIF, rendered HTML, Markdown and metadata. | Screenshot (viewport size, full page, delay, ad blocking), HTML-to-PDF from a URL or an HTML string, and page-to-Markdown, inside a wider catalog. There is no video, GIF or scrolling-capture operation. |
| Output format | PNG, JPEG and WebP images, PDF, video and GIF, HTML, Markdown and metadata. | Screenshot returns PNG or JPEG, base64-encoded in JSON, with no WebP. HTML-to-PDF returns a base64 PDF and page-to-Markdown returns Markdown. |
| JavaScript rendering | Not listed as a separate setting on the pages read: a screenshot, scrolling capture or video is itself a browser render. | Only inside operations built on a browser: screenshot and HTML-to-PDF. Other operations have no render flag, and the page-to-Markdown operation reports a client-rendered page as an error rather than returning it empty. |
| Proxies | CAPTCHA and anti-bot challenges may need target-site configuration or a separately configured proxy, which can add cost and latency. | Included in the unit price. The exit is chosen per operation, and many operations accept your own proxy URL. |
If screenshots are the job, ScreenshotOne is a specialist and the page should say so. Its free tier is larger than ours in screenshot terms, its formats are wider, and it offers capture styles upAPI does not: scrolling capture, video and GIF.
upAPI’s screenshot operation is deliberately narrower: PNG or JPEG, a viewport size, full-page capture, a delay, and optional ad blocking, rendered in headless Chromium and returned base64-encoded in the JSON response. It exists because a screenshot is usually one step in a pipeline that also reads the page, extracts its Markdown or prints it to PDF.
Whether that matters is arithmetic. With a screenshot at 20 units, a monthly quota of 100,000 buys 5,000 of them, or any mix with the 1-unit and 3-unit operations. If you take hundreds of thousands of screenshots a month, a specialist’s per-screenshot rate is the number to compare.
Where ScreenshotOne wins
- Screenshots are the whole product. Their output list is wider: WebP as well as PNG and JPEG, scrolling captures, video and GIF. upAPI returns PNG or JPEG only.
- More free screenshots. 100 a month is twice what a 20-unit screenshot gets from our free plan.
- Failed renders and cached responses cost nothing, per their own information page, and banner blocking comes with more than 50,000 rules and heuristics.
Where upAPI wins
- One key for the other jobs. Page-to-Markdown, HTML-to-PDF, page metadata, sitemaps and Maps are on the same quota, so a team that needs a screenshot and three other things holds one subscription.
- The unit price is published for every operation. A screenshot is 20 units and a metadata read is 1, which shows what the quota buys before you write the integration.
- A lower paid entry for a mixed workload. The first paid plan is $29 for 100,000 units, which is 5,000 screenshots if screenshots are all you run, or a mix if they are not.
When to pick which
- ScreenshotOne. Screenshots are the main job, or you need WebP, scrolling captures, video or GIF output that upAPI does not return.
- ScreenshotOne. You want the larger free screenshot allowance: 100 a month, against 50 from our free plan at 20 units each.
- upAPI. A screenshot is one step among several, such as reading the page as Markdown, printing it to PDF and reading its metadata, and you want one key and one quota.
- upAPI. You want to see the cost of each call before building: 20 units for a screenshot, 3 for Markdown and 1 for metadata.
- Both. Screenshots are a high-volume specialist job and the rest are occasional calls. Keep ScreenshotOne for the renders and put the rest on upAPI.
What switching actually costs
Replace the ScreenshotOne request with a POST to `api.upapi.io/screenshot` with an `X-Api-Key` header and a JSON body carrying the URL, viewport and format. The image comes back base64-encoded in the JSON rather than as a binary body, so decode it before saving.
Questions about ScreenshotOne and upAPI
How much does ScreenshotOne cost compared with upAPI?
ScreenshotOne gives 100 free screenshots a month, then Basic at $17 for 2,000 credits, Growth at $79 for 10,000 and Scale at $259 for 50,000, with one credit per output (its AI-information page, last verified by them 2 October 2026 and read by us 2026-10-07). upAPI is free at $0, then $29, $99 and $499; a screenshot costs 20 weighted units, so $29 buys 5,000 of them if you run nothing else.
Does ScreenshotOne have a free plan?
Yes. It offers 100 free screenshots a month with no credit card. upAPI’s free plan is 1,000 weighted units a month, which is 50 screenshots, or a mix of screenshots with cheaper operations.
Does ScreenshotOne charge for failed screenshots?
No. Their pages say requests that fail with HTTP, browser or network errors do not consume rendering credits, and cached responses are free. In upAPI, rejected, throttled and cache-hit calls are not billed, but a 4xx an operation itself returns is.
Which output formats does upAPI’s screenshot operation return?
PNG or JPEG, base64-encoded in the JSON response, with options for full-page capture, a viewport size, a delay and ad blocking. It does not return WebP, scrolling captures, video or GIFs. HTML-to-PDF and page-to-Markdown are separate operations.
Does ScreenshotOne support MCP?
Yes. Its docs describe a hosted MCP server with OAuth sign-in whose tools capture screenshots, extract Markdown and check usage, and which accepts public URLs only. upAPI’s hosted server also signs you in over OAuth, and the screenshot operation is in a category it serves.
Sources read on 2026-10-07: https://screenshotone.com/ai-information/, https://screenshotone.com/pricing/, https://screenshotone.com/docs/mcp/, https://screenshotone.com/llms.txt.
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