Web pages are not fixed documents. Prices change, campaigns rotate, terms are edited and layouts are redesigned, usually without any announcement. A URL points at whatever the page says today; a screenshot records what it said when you looked. That difference is the whole reason this tool exists.

This capture runs on the same rendering pipeline as our scheduled captures. The page is loaded in a real browser engine, given time to finish rendering, and photographed at the viewport you choose — so the image reflects a genuine visit rather than a stripped-down approximation of the HTML.

Viewport captures versus full-page captures

A viewport capture records only what fits on screen at the dimensions you set, exactly as a visitor sees it before scrolling. That makes it the right choice when what matters is the first impression: which headline is above the fold, whether the call to action is visible on a phone, how much of the page a cookie banner covers.

A full-page capture scrolls the whole document and stitches it into one tall image, so nothing below the fold is lost. Use that when you need the complete record — a full terms page, an entire product listing, a long article. Our full-page screenshot tool does exactly that, and the documentation on the difference covers the edge cases.

Getting a screenshot you can compare later

If you plan to compare captures over time, consistency matters more than any single image. Two screenshots of the same page taken at different widths are not comparable, because responsive layouts genuinely change. Fix the viewport, keep the same device profile, and capture at a similar point in the page's lifecycle.

• Set the viewport deliberately. Pick the width that represents your audience and keep using it.
• Give slow pages time. Content that arrives after the initial load — a price, a chart, a personalised block — needs the render to wait for it.
• Decide about overlays. Cookie banners and pop-ups are part of the real experience, but they obscure the page. Paid plans can remove them automatically.
• Mind geography. Many sites vary by country. Capturing from a chosen location shows what a visitor there actually gets.

When one screenshot is not enough

A manual capture answers a question you have today. The moment you find yourself repeating it — checking a competitor's pricing every Monday, archiving your own terms page after each release, proving a promotion ran — the work belongs on a schedule instead.

With an account you can capture the same page hourly, daily or weekly in your own timezone, restrict runs to a trigger window, and have every result delivered into Google Drive, Dropbox or any S3-compatible bucket. The history builds itself, dated and in order, without anyone remembering to take a screenshot.