PhotoRoom vs Screenshotlayer

PhotoRoom's API takes a product or portrait photo and returns a background-removed, background-generated, or otherwise edited image via a single multipart POST, authenticated with an x-api-key header per its docs at docs.photoroom.com — a separate GitBook site from the marketing homepage. A live CORS preflight against its segmentation endpoint reflected two different arbitrary Origin headers back with credentials enabled, so browser-side calls are supported directly. New accounts get a 1,000-image sandbox allowance for testing plus limited free production calls to the Remove Background endpoint, with paid plans covering higher volume and the full Image Editing API.

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.