Compared

Urlbox alternative with a free plan and PDFs on the same key

Urlbox is a screenshot specialist and goes deeper than we do: embeddable render links, a 30-day cache, ad blocking, GPU rendering, proxies. If screenshots are your product, it is the better tool. If screenshots are one of the things your app needs, next to PDFs, one key with a free plan and a flat price is the simpler buy.

Who this page is for

You wanted to try a screenshot API and found Urlbox has no free plan. Or you took the 9 Lo-Fi plan and hit its limits: thumbnails only for sites you do not own, a 2.5 MB file cap, a 30-second timeout. Or you need PDFs too and did not want a second vendor and a second invoice. Or you went over quota and were moved up a tier without asking.

If you need a screenshot that an ad-heavy site cannot spoil, a link you can drop into an img tag, or a thousand captures a minute, Urlbox is built for that and this page will say so.

What each one gives you

Urlbox is a capture service with a long options list and a cache in front of it: every URL you render gets a link that serves the cached image for 30 days. RenderBadger is a render API: every call renders, returns the file or a signed URL, and keeps it for a day to a month depending on plan. Same Chrome underneath.

Pricing at 2,000 and 10,000 renders

Urlbox's plans are by renders a month, with limits that tighten on the cheapest one. A render that takes more than 30 seconds or produces more than 5 MB counts as more than one, and going over your quota upgrades the plan rather than charging overage.

At 2,000 the sticker price matches, but the Urlbox plan at that price is the limited one; full-size captures of other people's sites start at 9. At 10,000 you are on Ultra at 9 against Pro at 9. And before either, there is the free plan question: with us you can find out whether the service suits you without a card or a trial clock.

Prices checked October 26, 2026. Both in US dollars.

Where Urlbox is the better choice

Anything beyond a plain capture. Render links let you put a screenshot URL straight into a page and let the cache serve it. Blocking ads, cookie banners and chat widgets keeps captures of third-party sites clean. GPU rendering handles WebGL and heavy canvases. Proxies and captcha solving get through sites that block data-centre traffic. Zapier and Make connect it without code. Business and Enterprise plans carry SLAs and dedicated clusters. If your product is screenshots, those are not extras, and Urlbox has them today.

Switching

Urlbox takes a GET with query parameters or a POST with JSON; we take a POST with JSON. The option names are close. Here is the same full-page capture on both.

curl -X POST https://api.urlbox.com/v1/render/sync \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $URLBOX_SECRET" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://example.com/changelog",
    "format": "png",
    "full_page": true,
    "width": 1280,
    "retina": true,
    "wait_for": ".release"
  }'
# { "renderUrl": "https://renders.urlbox.com/...", ... }

curl -X POST https://renderbadger.sh/v1/screenshot \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $RENDERBADGER_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://example.com/changelog",
    "format": "png",
    "fullPage": true,
    "viewport": { "width": 1280, "height": 800, "deviceScaleFactor": 2 },
    "waitFor": ".release",
    "output": "url"
  }'
# { "id": "job_...", "status": "done", "url": "https://renderbadger.sh/o/...", ... }

The renames:

The full option list is in the docs.