Best Screenshot MCP Servers in 2026 — 8 Real Options Compared

If you want your AI agent to capture web pages, one option is a screenshot MCP server — a server that exposes website screenshot capture as a tool your agent can call from Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, or any other MCP client. The catch: the query surfaces a mess of desktop screen-grabbers, abandoned repos, and browser-automation servers that can't actually return a screenshot. We checked every listed option's source, npm/registry metadata, and pricing pages. Here are the differences that matter when choosing one.

Disclosure: this comparison is published by Site-Shot, and our own MCP server is in it. We've kept the numbers accurate and the trade-offs honest — including where competitors beat us and where our own option is weakest. The original facts were checked in early July 2026 against each project's source code, registry metadata, and live pricing pages. ScreenshotOne, CaptureKit, Urlbox, and repository- maintenance notes were refreshed in September 2026. Confirm current limits before relying on them.

What counts as a screenshot MCP server?

Three different things answer to this name, and only the first is usually what you want:

1. Website screenshot MCP servers — take a URL, render it in a browser (theirs or yours), return an image. This is the category compared below.
2. Desktop screen-capture MCP servers — photograph your own screen (pyautogui and friends). Useful for "look at my monitor" pairing, useless for capturing arbitrary URLs. Several of these rank for the query; we flag them below.
3. Browser-automation MCP servers — drive a full browser session (navigate, click, extract). Powerful, but at least one of the most popular ones no longer returns screenshots at all.

Quick comparison table

Entry price is the cheapest paid plan of the underlying service; "install" is the vendor-documented path.

The short version: if you want a one-line install backed by a hosted rendering API — with full-page capture, ads and cookie banners stripped by default, and country-level geo targeting — Site-Shot's official server is the cheapest way in at $5/mo. ScreenshotOne also has an official one-line npm install and a free API tier. CaptureKit pairs screenshots with content and crawling over remote MCP; Urlbox adds several render formats and extraction. SnapRender bundles the most tools but is a very young project. Cloudflare's is genuinely free to start but viewport-only. The OSS options run captures locally, at the cost of running and maintaining headless Chromium yourself.

The servers, one by one

Site-Shot MCP — cheapest hosted option, cleanest defaults

Site-Shot's official server (site-shot-mcp on npm, registry id io.github.site-shot/site-shot-mcp, MIT) is a thin stdio wrapper over the hosted Site-Shot screenshot API — no bundled browser, just two dependencies. It exposes two tools: capture_screenshot and capture_full_page (scrolling capture up to 20,000 px). Ad blocking and cookie-banner removal are on by default, which matters for agents: overlays can hide the content the model needs. Removing them improves visibility, but does not automatically reduce image dimensions or token cost. It's also the only server in this list with country proxies — pass a country code and the page renders from a local IP with matching language, time zone, and geolocation.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "site-shot": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "site-shot-mcp"],
      "env": { "SITESHOT_API_KEY": "YOUR_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

The underlying API starts at $5/mo for 2,000 screenshots — the lowest paid entry in this comparison — and you can sanity-check output quality first with the free, no-signup browser tool. Honest weaknesses: the server launched in June 2026, so it has no community track record yet, and it does screenshots only — no PDF, scraping, or content-extraction tools like some competitors bundle.

ScreenshotOne MCP — official npm install and a free API tier

ScreenshotOne's official server (github.com/screenshotone/mcp, MIT) exposes render-website-screenshot and get-usage, with useful capture defaults: ad blocking and cookie-banner removal on, full-page via a full_page flag, and a cache-URL response mode that avoids stuffing huge base64 images into the context. As of September 2026, the official CLI runs with npx -y @screenshotone/mcp; cloning and building is no longer required. Use that vendor-owned scoped package rather than similarly named third-party packages. The CLI returns JPEG and does not expose the API's geolocation options. ScreenshotOne also documents a hosted MCP option in its repository. The underlying API has a generous free tier (100 shots/mo) and starts at $17/mo for 2,000 screenshots.

CaptureKit MCP — official remote endpoint with content tools

CaptureKit documents an official Streamable HTTP endpoint at https://mcp.capturekit.dev/. Connect with an API key in the x-api-key header; there is no local package to run. Each tool maps to a CaptureKit API operation, including screenshot capture, page content, analysis, and crawling. The screenshot API supports full-page capture, ad/cookie removal, and stealth mode without a country selector. Plans start at $7/mo for 1,000 credits, with 100 free credits per month. This is the useful pick when the same agent needs both the rendered image and clean page content.

SnapRender MCP — most tools, youngest project

SnapRender's server (snaprender-mcp on npm, MIT) is the feature-count leader: 11 tools including take_screenshot (full-page, device emulation, dark mode, ad and cookie-banner blocking on by default), content extraction to markdown, batch capture up to 50 URLs, webhooks, and signed URLs. It installs with npx -y snaprender-mcp or connects remotely over Streamable HTTP. The free tier is real — 200 screenshots/mo with MCP access, no card — and paid starts at $9/mo for 2,000. The trade-off is maturity: the project is months old with near-zero adoption (single-digit GitHub stars), a single maintainer, and no published overage pricing, so weigh it accordingly for production agents.

Cloudflare Browser Rendering MCP — free to start, viewport-only

Cloudflare runs a first-party remote MCP server (https://browser.mcp.cloudflare.com/mcp, OAuth login, no local install) with 13 tools spanning screenshots, HTML/markdown extraction, PDF rendering, and site crawling. It's backed by Cloudflare's global network and is genuinely free to start (10 minutes of browser time per day). But for screenshots specifically it's the weakest real option: we verified in the source that get_url_screenshot accepts only a URL and viewport size — no full-page capture, PNG only, no ad or cookie handling — even though the underlying REST API supports full-page. Paid usage is metered per browser-hour on the $5/mo Workers Paid plan. Good if you're already deep in the Cloudflare ecosystem and need extraction + crawling more than pixel-perfect captures.

Urlbox MCP — broad render formats and extraction

Urlbox's official MCP server installs with npx -y @urlbox/screenshot-mcp and exposes one render tool for screenshots, PDF/MP4 output, HTML/markdown extraction, metadata, and cookies. Its README also documents ad blocking and cookie-banner hiding. There is no ongoing free tier; third-party full captures start on Hi-Fi at $49/mo for 5,000 renders, while real-IP routing uses a proxy you supply on higher tiers. It is a natural option for existing Urlbox customers who want its broader render and extraction surface.

The self-hosted OSS route — free, private, and all yours to maintain

Two projects are worth knowing. universal-screenshot-mcp (Apache-2.0) installs with npx -y universal-screenshot-mcp, runs Puppeteer-driven Chromium locally, supports full-page and element capture, and is actively maintained with unusually serious security hardening (SSRF/DNS-rebinding protection, concurrency caps) for a small project. ScreenshotMCP by Up North Media (MIT) has nice capture ergonomics — device presets, element capture, wait conditions — and documents a clone-and-run install. It received browser-stability fixes in August 2026, so the earlier description of it as unmaintained no longer applies.

The shared trade-offs of self-hosting: rendering stays on your machine and there is no rendering-service subscription, but images sent to a hosted model still leave your machine. You update Chromium yourself, and these servers do not bundle managed proxies or ad/cookie-banner removal; bot-protected sites may also block their browsers.

Two things that look like screenshot MCP servers but aren't

Browserbase MCP. A popular, very actively maintained browser-automation server — but as of v3.0.0 the screenshot tool has been removed entirely (the repo's own test suite asserts no screenshot tool is registered). Agents can navigate, act on, and extract from pages, but can't capture an image. Even the legacy v2.x screenshot was viewport-only and downscaled for LLM vision limits. Choose it for agentic browsing, not for screenshots.

Desktop screen-grabbers. Several servers ranking for "screenshot MCP server" — m-mcp/screenshot-server, @kazuph/mcp-screenshot, and similar — capture your local desktop via OS APIs. They take no URL and render nothing: they photograph whatever is on your monitor. Useful for screen-sharing with an assistant; not a website screenshot tool.

How to choose

• One-line install, hosted rendering, cleanest images for vision models, lowest paid entry: Site-Shot MCP — npx -y site-shot-mcp, $5/mo for 2,000, ad/cookie removal and full-page by default, country proxies when you need geo-specific rendering.
• Already a ScreenshotOne customer, or want their free 100/mo tier: their official MCP server — run npx -y @screenshotone/mcp with your API key.
• Need screenshots plus clean content or crawling over a hosted endpoint: CaptureKit's remote MCP.
• Want batch capture, webhooks, and markdown extraction in one server, and accept a young project: SnapRender.
• Already use Urlbox or need its wider render formats: npx -y @urlbox/screenshot-mcp.
• All-Cloudflare stack, screenshots are secondary to extraction/crawling: Cloudflare Browser Rendering.
• Internal tools, privacy-first, no budget: universal-screenshot-mcp self-hosted.

For the underlying APIs behind these servers, see our 8-tool screenshot API comparison and the broader guide to giving AI agents website screenshots with MCP. Everything Site-Shot ships for agents — MCP config, llms.txt, OpenAPI — lives on the AI agents page. For the prior question — whether to delegate the capture at all or let the agent drive its own browser — see AI agent vs. screenshot API.

FAQ

What is the best screenshot MCP server in 2026? For most agents: Site-Shot MCP if you want a one-line hosted install with full-page capture, default ad/cookie removal, and the lowest paid entry ($5/mo for 2,000 shots); ScreenshotOne's official server if you want their free tier and official npm package; CaptureKit if you need screenshots plus page content; universal-screenshot-mcp if you'd rather run captures in your own Chromium instance.

Is there a free screenshot MCP server? Yes, three kinds. Fully free: the OSS self-hosted servers (your compute, no ad/cookie removal or proxies). Free tiers of hosted services: ScreenshotOne (100 shots/mo), CaptureKit (100 credits/mo), and SnapRender (200/mo including MCP). Cloudflare's remote server is free for 10 browser-minutes/day but is viewport-only. Site-Shot's free option is its no-signup browser tool; the MCP server itself needs an API key from a paid plan.

Do screenshot MCP servers need an API key? Hosted ones do — the server authenticates to the rendering API with a key you put in the MCP config (SITESHOT_API_KEY for Site-Shot, SCREENSHOTONE_API_KEY for ScreenshotOne, SNAPRENDER_API_KEY for SnapRender, x-api-key for CaptureKit, and SECRET_KEY for Urlbox). Cloudflare uses an OAuth login instead. Self-hosted OSS servers need no key at all — they run a local browser.

Can MCP screenshot tools capture the full page, not just the viewport? Site-Shot (capture_full_page, up to 20,000 px), ScreenshotOne (full_page flag), CaptureKit, SnapRender, Urlbox, and both OSS servers support full-page capture. Cloudflare's MCP tool is the exception — viewport-only, even though the underlying REST API can do full-page. Browserbase currently exposes no screenshot tool at all.

Why do ad blocking and cookie-banner removal matter for AI agents? Ads, consent overlays, and modals can cover the content the agent needs. Site-Shot, ScreenshotOne, and SnapRender remove them by default, making that content easier to inspect. This does not guarantee lower image-token costs: those depend on the model, image dimensions, and detail settings, not simply on whether ads are visible.

Test capture quality free in your browser — no signup — at site-shot.com. Building an agent? Start at the AI agents page and grab an API key on the pricing page.