Website Preview API
Show a live visual preview of any URL inside your own product — link previews in chat, site pickers in onboarding, visual diffing in CI.
Show a live visual preview of any URL inside your own product — link previews in chat, site pickers in onboarding, visual diffing in CI.
Why render from HTML at all
A preview is a screenshot with tighter latency expectations, because the user is watching. That shifts the design from render-on-request to render once, serve from cache, refresh in the background. RenderKit's edge cache and signed URLs make that the default pattern rather than something you assemble yourself out of a queue and an object store.
The request
curl https://api.renderkit.tech/v1/screenshot \
-H "x-api-key: $RENDERKIT_API_KEY" \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{ "url": "https://example.com", "full_page": true, "block_ads": true }'Options that matter here
- Signed CDN URLs — embeddable directly in an
<img>with no proxy of your own - Explicit cache TTL, so previews refresh on your schedule
- Geo rendering (US/UK) for sites that localise by IP
- The same key reads the page as markdown if you also want its text
More
Full screenshot API reference · API docs · compare RenderKit vs ScreenshotOne.
Common questions
Call /v1/screenshot with the target URL and render the returned signed URL in an img tag. Cache the URL against the link record so repeat views cost nothing.
Yes — responses are signed CDN URLs served over HTTPS, so no proxying or re-hosting is required unless you want the asset on your own domain.
RenderKit starts at $9/mo with 500 free renders, and screenshots, PDFs, and markdown extraction all draw from the same meter — there is no separate per-primitive plan.
Ship your first render in 60 seconds.
500 free renders to start. No card. Cancel by ignoring it.