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Product updates

Changelog.

New capabilities, meaningful fixes, and reliability work — dated and in the open.

  1. Cached renders are now free

    A render is billed only when a new image is rendered. Repeat requests for the same parameters within the 24-hour cache window no longer count against your quota or credits.

    • Previously a request answered from our origin cache was billed like a fresh render; only CDN edge hits were free. Now both are free, matching how every other per-render screenshot API in the market bills.
    • Cached images are served even after your quota and credits are exhausted — the 429 applies to new renders only. Rate limits are unchanged.
    • The billable-render definition in the Terms of Service (§2) is updated accordingly; nothing else in the Terms changes. Failed renders were, and remain, never billed.

    Out of beta

    Shotium is no longer labelled a public beta. Nothing about the API, pricing or your account changes — the label leaves because the service has earned it.

    • Thirty-three days since launch with every monitored check passing on status.shotium.com, and the billing lifecycle exercised end to end.
    • The "Public beta" badge is gone from the home page and the social card; the beta clause in the Terms of Service is removed (last updated 2026-09-20). Everything else in the Terms is unchanged.
    • What you can rely on stays the same: failed renders are never billed, quota is a hard 429 rather than an auto-charge, and the public /v1 endpoints, parameters and error types are treated as a compatibility boundary.

    OG image API guides for Next.js, Astro and Nuxt

    New guides at shotium.com/og-image-api show where a signed og:image URL goes in each framework — and when the framework's built-in option is the better choice.

    • shotium.com/og-image-api explains how a signed OG image URL works end to end, with Astro (layout frontmatter) and Nuxt (server route + useSeoMeta — the pattern this site's own blog runs) sections.
    • shotium.com/og-image-api/nextjs covers generateMetadata, an Edge-runtime signing variant using Web Crypto, and why og:image "works in production but not on localhost" when metadataBase is unset.
    • Each guide states plainly when ImageResponse, nuxt-og-image or astro-og-canvas is enough; the API is for real CSS, web fonts and one template across sites.

  2. More reliable subscription renewals

    Subscription quota periods now follow billing lifecycle updates, including payment retries.

    • Payment receipts no longer clear the subscription period or reset usage.
    • Successful renewals advance the billing period. Recovered payments restore access without resetting already-used quota.
    • Delayed and duplicate billing notifications are checked against the current order and subscription state before changing access.
    • Cancellation updates no longer block delayed payment recovery or refund adjustments. Refunds received before the matching credit purchase are retried instead of being discarded.
    • When you subscribe again, early notifications for the new subscription wait for activation rather than being mistaken for an old order.

  3. Shotium is a verified node on n8n Cloud

    The n8n node passed n8n's verification review — n8n Cloud users can now add Shotium from the nodes panel without installing anything.

    • On n8n Cloud, search for Shotium in the nodes panel and drag it onto the canvas. If it does not appear, make sure Verified Community Nodes is enabled in your admin panel.
    • Self-hosted n8n is unchanged: install n8n-nodes-shotium from Settings → Community Nodes.
    • The three operations — Take Screenshot, Generate OG Image and Generate Signed URL — are identical on both.

  4. A free Open Graph checker

    Paste a URL and see how it renders on X, Facebook and LinkedIn — with every OG and Twitter tag listed and the problems ranked.

    • New tool at shotium.com/tools/open-graph-checker: approximate previews for X, Facebook and LinkedIn, a lint-style issue list, and the raw Basic / Open Graph / Twitter tags.
    • The checker reads the same server-rendered HTML that social crawlers see — no JavaScript is executed, so client-side-injected tags are correctly reported as missing.
    • The preview image is fetched server-side through the same SSRF guard as the rendering pipeline; your browser never connects to the checked site.
    • Free usage is capped per visitor per hour and by a shared daily pool, separate from the OG generator's pool.

  5. Your first request, ready to run

    Creating an API key now hands you a complete cURL command with the key already in place — copy, paste, and your first screenshot is done.

    • When a new key is issued, the account page shows a ready-to-run first request alongside the credentials. Run it and the render appears in Recent renders below.
    • The API keys panel walks you through the three steps from empty account to first image, right where the button is.
    • Empty states now point somewhere useful: before you have a key they direct you to create one; after that they link straight to the quick start.

  6. A free OG image generator, no signup

    Try the five built-in templates with your own text before writing a line of code — then take the same parameters to the API.

    • New tool at shotium.com/tools/og-image-generator: pick a template, fill the fields, download a 1200×630 PNG. No account, no watermark, no credit card.
    • Every image is rendered by the same pipeline the API uses, so what you see in the browser is what the API returns.
    • After a render, copy a complete cURL request for the production API; signed URLs remain available for direct social-meta embeds.
    • Free-tool renders come from a shared daily pool and are capped per visitor. Signing up gives you 100 credits outside that pool, governed by the standard API rate limit.
    • JSON requests to POST /v1/og-image and the free tool must now declare a Content-Length of 16 KB or less; chunked request bodies are rejected. Normal HTTP clients send this header automatically.

    Sign in with Google

    A GitHub account is no longer a prerequisite — Google sign-in opens Shotium to everyone automating with n8n and other no-code tools.

    • Added Google as a second sign-in provider. Both providers grant the same 100 free render credits.
    • Signing in with either provider on an address you already use links to your existing account instead of creating a second one. Credits and API keys carry over untouched.
    • Linking is conservative: it only happens on a provider-verified email address, and an email already tied to a different sign-in identity is refused rather than silently rebound.
    • When a sign-in cannot complete, the sign-in page now tells you why instead of silently bouncing you back.

  7. Guides in seven languages, and a machine-readable contract

    Integration code for the language you actually work in, plus an OpenAPI definition you can hand to Postman, a code generator, or an AI agent.

    • New guides at shotium.com/screenshot-api for Python, Node.js, PHP, Ruby, Go, Java and cURL — each with runnable screenshot, OG image, signed URL and error-handling examples.
    • Published an OpenAPI 3.1 definition at shotium.com/openapi.json, generated from the same sources as the implementation so it cannot drift from the API it describes.
    • Fixed the signed-URL examples: they used encodeURIComponent, which leaves !'()* unencoded — signatures over parameters containing those characters would have failed verification. Each guide now shows the encoding its language actually needs.
    • Code samples across the docs and guides are syntax-highlighted, and pages load noticeably faster.

  8. The engineering blog is live

    Guides, honest comparisons, and engineering notes now have a permanent home — starting with how we SSRF-hardened the rendering pipeline.

    • Launched the blog at shotium.com/blog with an RSS feed at shotium.com/rss.xml.
    • First post: SSRF-hardening a screenshot API — the three-layer guard we run in production.
    • The sitemap now updates itself as posts go live; new posts land on a schedule.

  9. Shotium comes to n8n

    A community node brings Shotium into n8n workflows — rendering as drag-and-drop operations, no HTTP wiring.

    • Released n8n-nodes-shotium with three operations: Take Screenshot, Generate OG Image, and Generate Signed URL.
    • Signed URLs are computed locally inside the workflow — no API call, no render billed.
    • Credential verification never spends a render credit.
    • Open source at github.com/shotium/n8n-nodes-shotium — install it in n8n as n8n-nodes-shotium.

    The changelog is now public

    Product work now has a permanent, public record alongside our documentation, status page, and feedback tracker.

    • Every entry is dated and written as plain-language impact — no manufactured version numbers.
    • Linked from the site footer and the machine-readable llms.txt index.

  10. Live service status

    Service health and incident history are now visible without signing in.

    • Launched status.shotium.com with independent checks for the website and public API.
    • Added a live status indicator to every page footer, with an honest neutral state if status data is unavailable.
    • Added a 90-day uptime and response-time history view, with pre-monitoring days clearly marked.

  11. Shotium enters public beta

    The first public release shipped the complete screenshot and Open Graph image workflow.

    • Released the screenshot API with PNG, JPEG, WebP, full-page capture, and 24-hour caching.
    • Released five OG image templates plus HMAC-signed URLs designed for direct social-meta embeds.
    • Added GitHub sign-in, 100 free render credits, usage visibility, subscriptions, and one-time credit packs.
    • Published the API reference, AI setup prompt, and llms.txt index for both human- and agent-assisted integrations.

Have a request for what comes next? Add it to the public feedback tracker.