Website Screenshot & Visual Change Monitor

A bulk website screenshot API and visual change monitor on Apify. Take full-page screenshots of many URLs on desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile in one run. Optionally save each page as a PDF, and turn on change detection to see which pages look different since the last run, with a highlighted diff image.

Built for people who need clean captures without fiddling: cookie banners and chat bubbles are hidden, lazy-loaded images are scrolled into view, and ad/analytics requests are blocked so pages render faster and cleaner.

How to take website screenshots in 3 steps

1. Paste one or more URLs into URLs to capture (or a sitemap.xml link to capture a whole site).
2. Pick the devices (desktop, laptop, tablet, mobile) and turn on Also save a PDF or Detect visual changes if you need them.
3. Click Start. Screenshots appear in the Output tab with a preview; download them, or get the links from the API.

What you can use it for

• Archive how your site, or a client's, looked on a given day (desktop and mobile).
• QA after a deploy: capture every page from your sitemap on every device size.
• Watch competitor pricing or landing pages: schedule a daily run with change detection and only look at pages that changed.
• Thumbnails and previews for directories, link lists and reports.
• PDF snapshots of public pages for records.

Features

• Many URLs at once, or point it at a sitemap.xml (sitemap index files are followed).
• Devices: desktop 1440x900, laptop 1280x800, tablet 820x1180 (2x), mobile 390x844 (2x, mobile user agent). Pick several and each URL is captured once per device.
• Full page or first screen only. PNG or JPEG.
• Cookie banners and consent walls hidden with CSS (OneTrust, Cookiebot, Usercentrics, Didomi, Sourcepoint, Quantcast and others, plus a generic fallback). The Actor never clicks "Accept" for you.
• Chat widgets (Intercom, Drift, HubSpot, Crisp, Tidio and others) hidden.
• Ad and tracker requests blocked (optional).
• Dark mode emulation.
• Wait for a CSS selector, add an extra delay, hide your own selectors (useful for rotating banners that would otherwise trigger false "changes").
• Visual change detection: compares each capture with the previous run of the same monitor, reports the percentage of changed pixels, flags pages above your threshold, and saves a red-highlighted diff image.
• Safe by default: only public http(s) addresses are loaded. Private, loopback and cloud-metadata addresses are refused.

Input example

{
  "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://example.com" }, { "url": "https://www.bbc.com/news" }],
  "devices": ["desktop", "mobile"],
  "fullPage": true,
  "savePdf": true,
  "compareWithPrevious": true,
  "monitorName": "competitors",
  "changeThresholdPercent": "0.5"
}

To monitor, save this input as a Task and add a Schedule (for example daily). The first run stores a baseline; every later run compares against the run before it.

Output

Each capture is one dataset row. Images and PDFs are stored in the run's key-value store and linked by URL.

{
  "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping",
  "device": "mobile",
  "statusCode": 200,
  "title": "Web scraping - Wikipedia",
  "screenshotUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/<storeId>/records/0dbff88b785a47de-mobile",
  "width": 780,
  "height": 6552,
  "bytes": 272857,
  "loadTimeMs": 4109,
  "changePercent": 11.19,
  "changed": true,
  "sizeChanged": true,
  "diffImageUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/<storeId>/records/0dbff88b785a47de-mobile-diff",
  "previousCapturedAt": "2026-10-28T00:49:24.775Z",
  "pdfUrl": null,
  "error": null
}

Failed pages get a row with error filled in, so you can see what went wrong. A RUN_SUMMARY record in the key-value store has totals.

width and height are image pixels; tablet and mobile render at 2x, so a 390 px wide phone screen gives a 780 px wide image.

Pricing

Pay per event. You only pay for what succeeds.

Event	Price
Screenshot (one URL on one device)	$0.002
PDF	$0.003
Change comparison	$0.001

Failed or refused pages are free. The first run of a monitor has nothing to compare against, so it is not charged for comparisons. You can cap the cost of any run with the "Max total charge" setting; the Actor stops cleanly when the cap is reached.

Example: 100 pages on desktop and mobile with change detection = 200 screenshots + 200 comparisons = $0.60.

Integrations and API

• Schedule it: save your input as a Task, then add a Schedule (hourly, daily, weekly) to build a website change monitor.
• Get notified: use Apify integrations (Slack, email, webhooks) on run finish and filter dataset rows where changed is true.
• Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, n8n: all have Apify connectors that can start this Actor and read the dataset (screenshot links, change %, status codes).
• API / code: call it synchronously and get the rows back in one request:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/datacolada~website-screenshot-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"startUrls":[{"url":"https://example.com"}],"devices":["desktop","mobile"]}'

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("datacolada/website-screenshot-monitor").call(run_input={
    "startUrls": [{"url": "https://example.com"}],
    "devices": ["desktop", "mobile"],
})
for row in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(row["url"], row["device"], row["screenshotUrl"])

Tips

• Pages that change on every load (carousels, live tickers, ads) will always show some change. Add their selectors to "Extra selectors to hide", or raise the threshold.
• For very long pages, JPEG is much smaller than PNG. Change detection always uses PNG.
• If a site shows a blank page, try "Wait until: networkidle" or set "Wait for selector".
• Sites that block automated browsers may return an error page; the screenshot will show what was served.

FAQ

How much does a screenshot cost? $0.002 per successful screenshot (one URL on one device). 1,000 desktop screenshots cost $2. Failed pages are free.

Can I screenshot a whole website? Yes. Paste the site's sitemap.xml into Sitemap URL and set Max URLs (up to 5,000 per run).

How does change detection work? Each capture is compared pixel by pixel with the capture of the same URL and device from the previous run of the same Monitor name. You get changePercent, a changed flag based on your threshold, and a diff image with changes highlighted in red.

Does it click "Accept cookies"? No. Common consent banners and chat widgets are hidden with CSS, so nothing is accepted on your behalf.

Can it capture pages behind a login? Not at the moment. It captures public pages only.

How long are screenshots kept? Files are stored in the run's key-value store and kept according to your Apify plan's data retention. Download them or copy them to your own storage if you need them longer.

Mobile screenshots look twice as wide as the device. Why? Tablet and mobile render at 2x pixel density (like a real phone), so a 390 px phone screen gives a 780 px wide image.

Limits and fair use

Only capture pages you are allowed to access. The Actor does not log in, solve captchas or bypass paywalls. Respect each site's terms of use.

Changelog

• 0.1.3 Better README (FAQ, API and integration examples) and a prefilled example input that works on the first run.
• 0.1 First release.