My friend Dmytro[0] has been running a screenshot API called ScreenshotOne[1]. He's been building it solo and has reached $20K MRR recently.
I didn’t consider wrapping any service.
What needed for scraping is a bit different for what needed to screenshot websites.
I need to have full control over my cluster to guarantee the best possible quality.
I signed up on my phone and tested in the playground.
It will fit perfectly into my workflow. I'm building a hyper-local directory site.
Getting good images for businesses is hard, so I'll use this to grab an image of their site as a place holder.
I can also add it to my AI workflow where I pass a website to OpenAI Assistant to extract data. OpenAI s not as robust with URLs as it is with images or PDFs. Often it won't visit then URL.
I can use this to get an image or pdf, pass it on and ask for the data back. OpenAI is better with files than URLs in my experience.
Good job!
Well done!
SEO, social media and other channels. I spent a lot of time on all of that.
docker run -p 3000:3000 browserless/chrome:latest
curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/screenshot \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"url": "https://example.com"}' \
--output screenshot.pngCan chrome even take 100 screenshots a second? What would be the max? I think it's interesting.
If you have one, very narrow specific use case, then maybe that’s not so bad. But sounds like a huge pain if you need that for any arbitrary site.
Oh okay so it does:
chrome --load-extension=path/to/ublock --headless --screenshot https://website.com
The cost with running a docker container is you have to manage that container. You’re paying with dev time not money.
https://github.com/browserless/browserless/blob/main/LICENSE
If anyone wants to build “turn websites into APIs” and do it really well like OP, feel free to hmu.
Highly experienced full-stack and rust developer with experience at startups, G and Google X.
So if you want, "turn your website into an app", that would be interesting.