CurlShot vs FaviconDL: Which Is Better in 2026?

CurlShot gives your app, your scripts and your AI agents a clear look at any web page.

ONE REQUEST
Send a page address, HTML or Markdown to one endpoint and get back an image (PNG, JPEG, WebP), a PDF, or a scrolling video (MP4, WebM, GIF). No SDK: anything that can fetch a URL already works, and the docs have examples for cURL, Node.js, Python, PHP, Go and Ruby.

WHAT PEOPLE BUILD WITH IT
- Link previews and website thumbnails
- Open Graph images rendered from HTML templates
- Visual checks of pages across phones, tablets and desktops
- PDF archives of web pages for records and compliance
- Reports and certificates from Markdown or HTML
- AI agents that need to see a page, through MCP

DETAILS THAT SAVE TIME
Cookie banners and ads hidden before the capture. Lazy images loaded. Dark mode on request. Wait for a selector, click a button, inject CSS. Cache results and reuse them for free. Signed links so a key never appears in your HTML. Async jobs, webhooks and bulk runs of up to 100 pages.

WHO IT IS FOR
Developers adding previews or PDFs to a product, teams automating reports and checks in n8n or their own scripts, and builders giving AI agents a way to look at web pages.

PRICES
A free plan with 100 screenshots a month and no card. Paid plans have a fixed monthly price: $19, $79 or $249. Yearly billing gets 2 months free. 14-day money-back guarantee.

Try it without an account at https://curlshot.com

What problem it solves

Running headless browsers in production is fragile: cookie banners, lazy images, timeouts, memory and queues. Developers who need screenshots, PDFs or page videos in their apps, pipelines or AI agents get them from one HTTP request instead.

Alternatives & competitors

An alternative to running Puppeteer or Playwright yourself, and to other screenshot APIs.

FaviconDL retrieves website icons for developers, designers and people building Agent workflows. It is useful when a bookmark card, dashboard or directory needs the favicon belonging to a website. The web tool accepts a site URL and provides an icon that can be retrieved or downloaded, without requiring the user to create a new account.

For a quick task, paste the website URL into the browser tool and inspect the returned icon. This is a convenient starting point when assembling a small set of website cards or checking which favicon a site exposes. The source is the website's existing icon. FaviconDL is not a logo designer or an AI image generator, and it does not create new brand artwork from a prompt.

Developers can use the public API without an API key. The documented interface supports image output as well as JSON metadata, letting an application either request an icon or inspect the extraction result. Choose the output that fits the surrounding application rather than treating every response as a downloaded image. The documentation includes request examples and explains the available parameters.

Common uses include adding icons beside saved links, showing service icons in an internal dashboard, and building a directory interface where each entry points to its original website. A consistent interface can still need its own sizing and fallback rules, especially when a source website has no suitable icon. Do not assume that every website supplies a high-resolution asset or that an extracted icon replaces permission to use a brand's artwork.

The project repository also includes a local stdio MCP wrapper with an extract_favicon tool. An Agent can use that wrapper as part of a local setup. This is distinct from a hosted remote MCP service; developers should use the transport and setup instructions documented in the repository instead of assuming a public remote server exists.

The web tool and public API are free. No subscription, payment card or API key is needed for these entry points. The repository and documentation provide the technical details for anyone who wants to understand the workflow before integrating it.

Official documentation: https://favicondl.com/documentation.html
Source repository: https://github.com/sweesama/favicondl.com