Before you read on

Puppeteer is free under the Apache 2.0 licence, actively developed, and gives you everything a browser can do: log in, run your own scripts, walk multi-step flows, capture pages on your private network. Nothing leaves your infrastructure, and at high, steady volume on servers you already run it can cost less than any API, ours included. If you need that control, run it yourself.

The differences, plainly

What	Puppeteer	Shareglint
Price	Free library; you pay for the servers and the hours spent running Chrome	100 renders a month free (watermarked), then $9 for 2,000
Browser	Chrome for Testing, downloaded on install (about 280 MB on Linux); Firefox also supported	Chrome, installed and updated by us
Control	Complete: any script, logins, cookies, multi-step flows, private networks	Options per request: viewport, device, full page, element, clicks, waits, hidden selectors; public URLs only
Operations	Yours: memory per browser, fonts, timeouts, crashes, scaling	None on your side: one HTTP request
Rendering URLs your users submit	You must block private and cloud-metadata addresses yourself (SSRF)	An egress proxy lets the browser reach only public addresses on ports 80 and 443
Ad and cookie-banner blocking	Build it or plug it in yourself	block_ads and block_cookie_banners on every plan
Scrolling video	Script it yourself, for example with ffmpeg	MP4 or GIF in one request, 5 renders each
Template images in every social size	Build your own templating	153 built-in templates and 6 sizes (og 1200×630, square 1080×1080, portrait 1080×1350, story 1080×1920, pinterest 1000×1500, youtube 1280×720) from one request
Languages	JavaScript and TypeScript on Node.js	Any language that can make an HTTP request

Puppeteer pricing (free (Apache 2.0 licence), you run the browser on your own servers) comes from their own public page, checked 2026-11. If something has changed — tell us and we will fix it.

Which one to pick

Take Puppeteer

You need logins, private pages, custom scripts or multi-step flows, or you already run Chrome reliably and your volume is high and steady.

Take Shareglint

You want screenshots or OG images without running Chrome — no memory tuning, font packages, crash restarts or SSRF filtering — and to pay per render.

What migrating looks like

Swap the call to their API (or your own browser code) for one request to the screenshot endpoint: the page URL plus the options you used — full page, viewport or device, an element selector, cookie-banner and ad blocking. A viewport screenshot uses 1 of your monthly images, a full page 2.

curl -X POST "https://shareglint.com/v1/screenshots?wait=true" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url":"https://example.com","full_page":true,"block_cookie_banners":true}'

Screenshot API

Other comparisons

Bannerbear · Placid · HTMLCSStoImage · Orshot · @vercel/og · Cloudinary · ScreenshotOne · Urlbox · ApiFlash · Templated · APITemplate.io · RenderForm · Imejis.io · Abyssale · html2canvas

Read the docs Check your OG image

Shareglint as an alternative to Puppeteer