Scrapfly Screenshot

Use the Scrapfly Screenshot API to capture high-quality screenshots of web pages with JavaScript rendering and anti-bot bypass.

When to use

• Capturing full-page or viewport screenshots of websites
• Taking screenshots of specific page elements via CSS selector/XPath
• Rendering pages behind anti-bot protections for visual capture
• Generating screenshots in different formats (JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF)
• Testing pages at different screen resolutions

Setup

pip install scrapfly-sdk

The API key must be provided via environment variable SCRAPFLY_API_KEY or passed directly to the client.

API Reference

Endpoint: GET https://api.scrapfly.io/screenshot

ScrapflyClient

from scrapfly import ScrapflyClient, ScreenshotConfig
import os

client = ScrapflyClient(key=os.environ["SCRAPFLY_API_KEY"])

ScreenshotConfig Parameters

Examples

Basic viewport screenshot

from scrapfly import ScrapflyClient, ScreenshotConfig
import os

client = ScrapflyClient(key=os.environ["SCRAPFLY_API_KEY"])

result = client.screenshot(ScreenshotConfig(
    url="https://web-scraping.dev/products",
))

# Save the screenshot image
with open("screenshot.jpg", "wb") as f:
    f.write(result.image)

Full-page screenshot as PNG

result = client.screenshot(ScreenshotConfig(
    url="https://web-scraping.dev/products",
    format="png",
    capture="fullpage",
    auto_scroll=True,
))

with open("fullpage.png", "wb") as f:
    f.write(result.image)

Screenshot of a specific element

result = client.screenshot(ScreenshotConfig(
    url="https://web-scraping.dev/product/1",
    rendering_wait=5000,
    format="png",
    capture="div.features" # CSS selector
))

with open("element.png", "wb") as f:
    f.write(result.image)

Custom resolution (mobile)

result = client.screenshot(ScreenshotConfig(
    url="https://web-scraping.dev/products",
    resolution="375x812",  # iPhone viewport
))

with open("mobile.jpg", "wb") as f:
    f.write(result.image)

Screenshot with banner blocking and dark mode

result = client.screenshot(ScreenshotConfig(
    url="https://web-scraping.dev/products",
    options=["block_banners", "dark_mode"],
    rendering_wait=2000,
))

with open("clean_dark.jpg", "wb") as f:
    f.write(result.image)

Wait for dynamic content before capture

result = client.screenshot(ScreenshotConfig(
    url="https://web-scraping.dev/products",
    wait_for_selector="div.products",
    rendering_wait=3000,
))

with open("fully_loaded_screenshot.jpg", "wb") as f:
    f.write(result.image)

Screenshot with geo-targeting

result = client.screenshot(ScreenshotConfig(
    url="https://web-scraping.dev/products",
    country="de",
    resolution="1920x1080",
))

with open("german_version.jpg", "wb") as f:
    f.write(result.image)

Execute JavaScript before capture

Run custom JS before the screenshot (e.g. remove the navbar, cookie modal, or sidebar). Replace the selectors with ones that match your target page—inspect the page in DevTools to find them.

import base64

# Example: remove navbar (adjust selector for your page: nav, header, .navbar, etc.)

js_code = "var el = document.querySelector('.navbar-collapse'); if (el) el.remove();"
js_code = base64.urlsafe_b64encode(js_code.encode('utf-8')).decode('utf-8')

result = client.screenshot(ScreenshotConfig(
    url="https://web-scraping.dev/products",
    js=js_code, # remove the nav bar
    rendering_wait=1000,
))

with open("clean.jpg", "wb") as f:
    f.write(result.image)

Error Handling

from scrapfly.errors import ScrapflyError

try:
    result = client.screenshot(ScreenshotConfig(url="https://web-scraping.dev/products"))
    with open("screenshot.jpg", "wb") as f:
        f.write(result.image)
except ScrapflyError as e:
    print(f"Screenshot failed: {e.message}")

Important Notes

• The image attribute on the response contains the raw binary image data
• Use format="png" for pixel-perfect screenshots; "jpg" for smaller file sizes
• auto_scroll=True is recommended for capture="fullpage" to trigger lazy-loaded images
• block_banners removes cookie consent banners and overlay popups
• rendering_wait default is 1000ms; increase for JS-heavy pages
• js parameter content must be base64-encoded and under 16KB
• Screenshots are stored by Scrapfly and retrievable via URL in the X-Scrapfly-Screenshot-Url response header