PageBolt Hobby: Screenshot and PDF APIs for Side Projects Under $10/Month

You're building a side project. Maybe it's a tool for yourself, maybe a small SaaS, maybe a utility you plan to monetize later. Right now, it doesn't need a $29/month plan. You need something cheap that just works.

If you've ever thought "I need to take screenshots or generate PDFs, but I can't justify the cost," PageBolt Hobby is for you.

The Problem: APIs Aren't "Free" for Builders

Most screenshot/PDF tools have two pricing tiers:

Free tier: Heavily rate-limited. Good for trying things out. Unusable for production.

Paid tier: Starts at $29/month. For a side project making $0, that's a hard sell.

Hobby tier: $9/month, 500 requests. Enough for most side projects, low enough to actually use.

Indie developers shouldn't have to pay $29 to build. We need an in-between.

What You Get at $9/Month

• 500 API requests/month (screenshot + PDF combined)
• Same API as the paid tiers (no feature limitations)
• 10-second response times (reliable)
• 1 year data retention (download your results)
• Email support (human help when things break)

No credit card required to start. Sign up, get your API key, start building.

Real Example: Building a Link Previewer

Let's say you're building a simple tool: users paste a URL, you show them what the page looks like (screenshot) + generate a PDF of it.

With PageBolt Hobby, here's the full implementation:

const fetch = require('node-fetch');
const express = require('express');

const app = express();
app.use(express.json());

const PAGEBOLT_API_KEY = process.env.PAGEBOLT_API_KEY;

// Endpoint: Take screenshot of URL
app.post('/api/screenshot', async (req, res) => {
  const { url } = req.body;
  if (!url) return res.status(400).json({ error: 'URL required' });

  const response = await fetch('https://pagebolt.dev/api/v1/screenshot', {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: {
      'x-api-key': PAGEBOLT_API_KEY,
      'Content-Type': 'application/json'
    },
    body: JSON.stringify({
      url,
      viewport: { width: 1280, height: 720 },
      format: 'png'
    })
  });

  if (!response.ok) return res.status(response.status).json({ error: 'Screenshot failed' });

  res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'image/png');
  res.send(await response.buffer());
});

// Endpoint: Generate PDF of URL
app.post('/api/pdf', async (req, res) => {
  const { url } = req.body;

  const response = await fetch('https://pagebolt.dev/api/v1/pdf', {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: {
      'x-api-key': PAGEBOLT_API_KEY,
      'Content-Type': 'application/json'
    },
    body: JSON.stringify({ url, format: 'A4' })
  });

  res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/pdf');
  res.send(await response.buffer());
});

app.listen(3000, () => console.log('Running on port 3000'));

Cost for this tool:

• PageBolt Hobby: $9/month
• Vercel hosting: $0 (free tier)
• Domain: ~$12/year
• Total: $9/month

If you get 10 paying customers at $5/month each, you're profitable in month two.

Real Use Cases for Hobby

Link previewer: Show users what a URL looks like before they visit.

Invoice generator: Small business creating invoices from HTML templates.

Report automation: Scheduled screenshots of dashboards, emailed to you weekly.

Website monitoring: Hourly screenshots to detect visual changes and catch bugs early.

Marketing assets: Auto-generate product screenshots for your landing page.

Content tool: Extract blog posts as PDFs for readers.

Why Hobby Makes Sense

Indie developers have constraints:

• $0 budget (pre-revenue)
• <1,000 users (low volume)
• Personal projects (low traffic)
• Can't justify infrastructure

Hobby solves all four. 500 requests/month is enough for:

• 16 requests/day (feasible for small tools)
• 100 requests/week (documentation generator)
• 1–2 requests per user for 250 active users

If you're bigger than that, upgrade to Starter ($29, 5K requests). But if you're building on nights and weekends, Hobby is the right tier.

The Math

Self-hosted alternative:

• AWS t3.micro: $5/month
• Puppeteer (headless Chrome): $0
• DevOps maintenance: 2 hours/month at $25/hr = $50
• Total: ~$55/month + your time

PageBolt Hobby: $9/month, zero ops.

If you're willing to run your own infrastructure, great. But most indie developers would rather pay $9 and not think about it.

Getting Started

1. Go to pagebolt.dev/signup?plan=hobby
2. Sign up (no credit card for the free trial)
3. Copy your API key from the dashboard
4. Start making requests

Start with the free tier (100 requests/month, no card required) to try it out. Hobby is $9/month when you're ready to go beyond that.

This tier exists to say: Start small. Pay small. Grow when you're ready.