The Lucrative World of Boring Screenshot API Businesses

In the previous Showcase, we talked about the "boring business" of screen capture tools.

Well, today's case might seem even more boring.

Screenshot API — sounds boring, yes?

But let's take a peek behind the scenes and explore the opportunities it presents, as well as what some current products are doing with it.

Screenshotone: $5k/mo

Screenshotone is a platform that provides web page screenshot services, allowing users to obtain static image snapshots of website pages via an API.

Dmytro Krasun founded ScreenshotOne in 2022 to address the tedious, mundane, and error-prone nature of taking screenshots. He recognized this as a problem he could effectively solve, and he succeeded in doing so. The screenshot API he built has satisfied customers and received positive feedback, motivating him to create a solution that significantly improves the screenshot process.

ScreenshotOne generated a revenue of $5k/mo.

Screenshotapi: $5.3K/mo

Screenshotapi offers a robust solution that enables users to take programmatic screenshots of any website in mere seconds.

Screenshotapi was founded in 2019 by Dirk Hoekstra. Later, it was acquired by XOXO Capital when its MRR was around $550 in 2020. The selling price for the acquisition was $23K. To increase the MRR, Danny Chu, the CEO of XOXO Capital, focused on personalized outreach to identify potential features for upselling to users from major companies, aiming to increase the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and Lifetime Value (LTV). This involved setting up Metabase for targeted Slack alerts, tracking product usage data in HubSpot, and engaging users for feedback and potential upselling. As a result, within 30 days, they successfully closed deals with 2 enterprise customers, leading to a 50% increase in the total MRR.

Danny Chu announced in March 2023 that the revenue of ScreenshotAPI had reached $5.3K/mo.

Urlbox: $3.5k/mo

Urlbox is an API service that provides automated website screenshots, HTML to PDF or PNG conversion, and other features. It simplifies the process of capturing full or partial webpage screenshots, emulating real desktop or mobile devices using the Chrome browser.

In 2012, Chris Roebuck, after working for major banks in London, decided to pursue his entrepreneurial aspirations in Silicon Valley. Following his participation in Y Combinator (YC) with college friends, he returned to London and quietly introduced a basic version of Urlbox in 2013.

In 2017, Chris disclosed that URLbox's monthly revenue was $3.5k.

URL2PNG: $1M-$5M

URL2PNG is a service that captures snapshots of any website, offering quick and reliable screenshot automation for your app with high fidelity rendering.

Despite the outdated appearance of URL2PNG's official site, the company has a 16-year history. Established in 2008, URL2PNG has been a reliable resource for developers in need of precise and efficient website screenshots for their applications. Presently, it maintains a monthly average traffic of 10,000 to 50,000 visitors.

ZoomInfo reports that Url2png's revenue falls within the range of $1M-$5M .

Restpack: Sold for $500k

RestPack is a company focused on building great RESTful microservices for developers and businesses.

Founded in 2015 by Arsen Nurmagomedov, Restpack offers several APIs, including the Screenshot API for capturing screenshots of any webpage with a single API call, the HTML to PDF API for converting structured PDFs from any HTML with minimal code, and the Browser Mockup API for transforming any image into a beautiful browser mockup.

Restpack was sold in an acquisition, ultimately exiting for close to $500,000 in 2021.

Apiflash: $79.7k/y

Apiflash is a powerful screenshot API based on Google Chrome and AWS Lambda, enabling developers to capture full page or mobile screenshots with ease.

ApiFlash was developed by a team of passionate software engineers who have years of experience in creating safe and fast APIs. It is a product of NetCube SASU, a small technology company based in Montpellier, France, which has been operational since 2017 and has launched several successful products, including ApiFlash. ApiFlash is used by over 13,100 companies to create millions of screenshots daily.

According to the report, In 2023, ApiFlash generated revenue of $79.7K.