APITemplate.io vs Screenshotlayer

APITemplate.io lets teams design reusable HTML or drag-and-drop templates in a browser editor, then render them into images or PDFs on demand through a REST call, Zapier, Make, or n8n. Requests send JSON overrides for named text, image, and color elements (with Jinja2 available for PDF templating) and get back a hosted download URL for the generated PNG or PDF. A free plan covers 50 image/PDF renders and 3 templates a month, with paid PDF and image plans scaling to tens of thousands of documents.

Screenshotlayer (an APILayer product) is a REST API that renders any public URL into a PNG, JPEG, GIF, or WebP screenshot, with parameters for viewport size, full-page capture, and retina/2x scaling. A live GET against api.screenshotlayer.com/api/capture with a bogus access_key returns a 101 invalid_access_key JSON error rather than serving anonymously, proving every call requires a real key passed as the access_key query parameter — auth is corrected from "None" to "API Key". That same probe carried Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * even on the error response, resolving the stored "unknown" cors to "yes". screenshotlayer.com/pricing lists a Free plan alongside paid Basic/Professional/Business tiers billed annually — freemium.