GoFullPage vs. FireShot vs. Awesome Screenshot vs. Page Scanner: which full-page capture extension should you use?

Every one of these four gives you the whole page, top to bottom, in a click. If that were the whole question you could pick the one with the nicest icon. The differences start the moment you ask what you get: a picture of the page or a document you can search, a file on your disk or a link in someone's cloud, a free tool or a free trial.

I build Page Scanner, so read the verdicts with that in mind. To keep myself honest, every claim below about the other three comes from their own websites, help centres or store listings, and they are linked at the end so you can check them.

The four at a glance

✓ offered, ✗ not offered, — not stated on the product's own site. "Premium" and "Pro" mean the paid tier.

A note on FireShot's free tier: its Chrome Web Store listing says the free version captures the "entire page" and saves "PDF (with links), PNG, and JPEG", while the feature table on its own site lists "Full page" and "Direct links" under Pro. Both are FireShot's words; try the free version on the page you care about before you decide.

They capture the page in two different ways

Three of the four are screenshot tools, and they say so. GoFullPage's FAQ describes it plainly: click, and "the extension scrolls down and across the current page you're viewing in your browser, assembling each scroll window into a single image". That is a mature technique and GoFullPage is very good at it: its FAQ talks about handling fixed elements, inner scrollable areas like Gmail, and iframes. It also has the limits a screenshot has. The same FAQ notes that a hover state cannot be captured, because the scroll loses it, and that a very large page may come out as several images.

Page Scanner does not stitch. It lays the page out once at its full height, takes one screenshot of that layout for the preview you crop, and asks Chrome's own print pipeline to render the same layout as a PDF. The text in that PDF is text and the artwork is vector, because Chrome drew them that way. The cost is that it needs Chrome's debugger to do it, so Chrome shows its "started debugging this browser" bar for the length of the scan, and it only runs on Chrome and Chromium browsers.

Neither approach is wrong. A picture is the right output when a picture is what you want.

What the PDF actually contains

This is where the four separate most.

GoFullPage exports its image "to PDF in a page size of your choice". Set the PDF size to "full image" in its settings and the whole capture lands on one long page; otherwise it is sliced into pages, and Premium adds "smart PDF page splitting". Either way the page holds a picture: you cannot select a sentence or search for a word.

FireShot is the screenshot tool whose PDF comes closest to a document. Its feature table lists single-page PDFs for everyone, and for Pro "Multipage PDFs", "Direct links", "Text features (search, select, copy)", a custom page size, and headers and footers that can carry the date, time and URL.

Awesome Screenshot gets to PDF through the print dialog: its help centre says to click More beside a full-page screenshot, then Print, then "Save as PDF", which saves it as multiple pages in a paper size of your choice, A4 to A3. It is the screenshot on paper.

Page Scanner writes a PDF whose text you can select, search and copy, on A4 or US Letter with the page breaks moved to where they do not cut a line of text, or as one long page the exact size of the crop. A URL and time stamp, a coloured margin and a border are options in the same panel. What it does not do: links in the page do not become links in the PDF, text drawn on a canvas is a picture, and a video is a still.

Editing and annotation

GoFullPage Premium, at US$12 a year with a seven-day trial, is where the editing lives: image cropping, annotations (blur, text, highlight), the URL and timestamp, and the smart page splitting. The free tier captures and downloads without limit; it just does not edit.

FireShot Pro has the biggest editor of the four, with shapes, numbers, styles, unlimited undo, watermarks, headers and footers, and a multi-editor interface. FireShot's own pricing page qualifies it as "Editor & smart annotations (on Windows)".

Awesome Screenshot annotates on every plan. The free plan has "basic annotation tools" and the paid plans "all annotation tools".

Page Scanner puts crop, rectangles, ellipses, lines, arrows, a highlighter, text, emoji, blur and redaction on the free tier, because there is no other tier. Two of those are worth a sentence. A blur in Page Scanner does not only soften the pixels: in the PDF, the text under it is rewritten to other letters, so a PDF reader cannot copy out what you blurred. A redaction removes that text from the file. In a screenshot tool a blur is a blur on a picture, which is fine, because there is no text underneath to leak.

Sharing, recording and the cloud

If your capture is going to a colleague rather than a folder, Awesome Screenshot is built for that and the other three are not. It records your screen and camera as well as capturing, shares by link, and connects to Trello, Slack, Asana, Jira and Google Drive. Its free plan keeps up to 100 screenshots in its cloud, unlimited if you save locally, and records up to five minutes at a time.

FireShot Pro uploads to FTP and HTTP servers, exports to OneNote, and lets you drag captures into Gmail, Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive. GoFullPage downloads the file. Page Scanner downloads the file, or puts a PNG on the clipboard, and has no account, no upload and no server on purpose.

Where your captures go

GoFullPage says it "requires no special permissions for installation and basic usage", and asks for what it needs at capture time. FireShot says "100% local captures keep your work private and offline-safe". Awesome Screenshot stores in its cloud on the plans that include it, and locally if you choose. Page Scanner asks for no host permissions, sends nothing anywhere, keeps a capture in the browser's own storage for twelve hours so the editor can open it, and then deletes it.

The honest asymmetry is the permission. Page Scanner uses Chrome's debugger permission, because that is the only way an extension reaches Chrome's print-to-PDF pipeline, and Chrome puts a bar on the window while it is attached. The screenshot tools do not need it.

What they cost

• GoFullPage: free, with unlimited captures. Premium is US$12 a year, with a seven-day trial.
• FireShot: FireShot Lite is free. Pro is US$39.95 a year, or US$99.95 once, for two devices.
• Awesome Screenshot: free plan. Basic is US$5 a month billed annually (US$6 monthly) for unlimited screenshots; Professional is US$6 a month billed annually (US$8 monthly) and adds unlimited recordings. There is a Team plan.
• Page Scanner: free. There is no paid tier and nothing to sign up for.

Which should you use?

Use GoFullPage if you want the most widely used full-page screenshot tool, a picture is what you need, and you are on Edge or Firefox as well as Chrome. Go Premium if you annotate often.

Use FireShot if you want a screenshot tool whose PDF keeps text and links, you would rather pay once than subscribe, and you are on Windows for the editor. Its batch capture of every open tab or a list of URLs has no equivalent here.

Use Awesome Screenshot if the capture is for a teammate: screen recording, share links and the Slack and Trello integrations are the product, and the screenshot is one part of it.

Use Page Scanner if the PDF is the point. You want to search it, print it on A4 without shrinking it to a strip, blur or redact something and know it is gone from the file, or capture from a script or an AI agent through the Chrome you are already signed in to. You accept Chrome's debugging bar during the scan, and that it is Chrome only.

Frequently asked questions

Can any of them capture a page I am logged in to? Yes. All four run inside your own browser, so a page you can see is a page they can capture.

Which one keeps the links clickable? FireShot Pro lists "Direct links". GoFullPage and Awesome Screenshot produce pictures, which have no links. Page Scanner keeps the text but not the links; it is on its list of known limits.

Can I run one from a script? Page Scanner has a command line and an MCP server for agents. FireShot lists an API under Pro. GoFullPage and Awesome Screenshot are driven by clicking.

Is a blur safe in a screenshot? In a picture, yes: the pixels are gone. The question only arises in a PDF that still holds the text, which is why Page Scanner rewrites it under a blur and removes it under a redaction.

Where this comes from

• GoFullPage: gofullpage.com, the Premium page and the FAQ.
• FireShot: getfireshot.com, the Lite and Pro comparison, the pricing page and its Chrome Web Store listing.
• Awesome Screenshot: awesomescreenshot.com, its pricing and the help centre article on saving a screenshot as PDF.
• Page Scanner: the documentation and the privacy policy.