URL to Image
The high resolution screenshot API you’ve been searching for.
Creating an image from a URL
With the API, you can automate taking a screenshot of any website.
Pass the url param to the hcti.io/v1/image endpoint, and we’ll generate a screenshot for you. Here’s an example using cURL.
curl -X POST https://hcti.io/v1/image -u 'UserID:APIKey'
--data-urlencode url="https://google.com"
Don’t write code? Don’t worry, you can also do this with our Zapier integration.
Additional parameters
To customize your image further, you can take advantage of the following optional parameters.
| Name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| block_consent_banners | Boolean | When set to true, automatically blocks cookie consent banners and popups on websites. Most useful for URL screenshots. |
| color_scheme | String | Set Chrome to render in light or dark mode. Affects websites using prefers-color-scheme. |
| device_scale | Double | Controls the image resolution by adjusting the pixel ratio. Minimum: 0.1, Maximum: 3. Higher values increase image quality and file size. For example, 2 will double the resolution. |
| disable_twemoji | Boolean | Twemoji is used by default to render emoji consistently. Set to true to use native emoji fonts instead. |
| full_screen | Boolean | When set to true, the API will generate an image of the entire height of the page. |
| google_fonts | String | Google fonts to be loaded. Example: Roboto. Multiple fonts can be loaded like this: Roboto|Open Sans |
| jumbo_max_height | Integer | Maximum output height when rendering a jumbo image (up to 80,000px). Must be set together with jumbo_max_width. Consumes extra renders. |
| jumbo_max_width | Integer | Maximum output width when rendering a jumbo image (up to 80,000px). Must be set together with jumbo_max_height. Consumes extra renders. |
| max_wait_ms | Integer | Sets a maximum time limit (500-10000ms) for waiting before taking the screenshot. Unlike ms_delay, this is a cap rather than a fixed delay. Useful when pages load extra irrelevant content. |
| media_type | String | Set Chrome to render using screen or print CSS media styles. |
| ms_delay | Integer | The number of milliseconds the API should delay before generating the image. This is useful when waiting for JavaScript. We recommend starting with 500. Large values slow down the initial render time. |
| pdf_options | Object | Customize PDF output with page size, margins, scale, and background printing. Use this when you plan to request the generated URL with a .pdf extension. |
| proxy_id | String | Route the render’s outbound traffic through one of your HTTP proxies configured in the dashboard. Available on the 10k images/month plan or higher. |
| render_when_ready | Boolean | Set to true to control when the image is generated. Call ScreenshotReady() from JavaScript to generate the image. |
| selector | String | A CSS selector for an element on the webpage. We’ll crop the image to this specific element. For example: section#complete-toolkit.container-lg |
| storage_destination_id | String | Save rendered files to one of your organization’s storage destinations. Available on the 3,000 images/month plan or higher. |
| timezone | String | Render your image with Chrome set to a specified timezone. Use IANA timezone identifiers like America/New_York. |
| transparent_background | Boolean | Set to true to render with a transparent background. The existing CSS-based method remains supported. |
| viewport_height | Integer | Set the height of Chrome’s viewport. This will disable automatic cropping. Both height and width parameters must be set if using either. |
| viewport_landscape | Boolean | Set Chrome’s viewport to landscape mode. |
| viewport_mobile | Boolean | Set Chrome’s viewport to emulate a mobile device. |
| viewport_touch | Boolean | Set Chrome’s viewport to support touch events. |
| viewport_width | Integer | Set the width of Chrome’s viewport. This will disable automatic cropping. Both height and width parameters must be set if using either. |
Screenshot examples
A full screenshot of stripe.com. With device scale set to 2, for a super high resolution image.
Screenshot part of a page with Selector
You can set a selector to target a specific part of the page.
For example, on Stripe’s homepage, there is an element with the CSS selector section#complete-toolkit.container-lg.
When passing that to the API, we crop to that element only.
CSS Selectors
To learn about CSS Selectors, we recommend this article. There are also Chrome extensions that detect them for you, we like using: Selector Gadget.
Blocking cookie consent banners
Many websites display cookie consent popups that can interfere with your screenshots. Use the block_consent_banners parameter to automatically hide these:
curl -X POST https://hcti.io/v1/image -u 'UserID:APIKey' \
--data-urlencode url="https://example.com" \
--data block_consent_banners=true
This automatically detects and blocks common consent frameworks like OneTrust, Cookiebot, and others. For more advanced cases, see our complete guide to blocking cookie banners.
Pages requiring login or sign-in
Our API does not support pages that require login. The URL must be publicly accessible for us to generate an image of it. Supporting login is a common request, but we have chosen not to support it due to the risk of storing and transmitting credentials.
Some sites have the option of creating an “embed” of a page. This is the best option if it’s available to you. You can then use the embed’s HTML to generate a screenshot without login.
Do you have an IP allowlist?
We don’t provide a static IP list. Our rendering servers scale dynamically on AWS, so the source IPs can change.
If you are screenshotting protected URLs, we recommend adding a custom query parameter to the URL (for example ?hcti=1) and creating a firewall rule (such as in Cloudflare) that allows requests when that query parameter is present.
Need help getting started?
We’d be happy to walk you through getting started. Send us an email: support@htmlcsstoimage.com. We’re experts at generating images and will help you get going using the API.