OpenCapture › Alternatives › FireShot alternative
An open-source FireShot alternative, with the editor included
FireShot is closed source and puts its complete editor behind a paid Pro licence. OpenCapture's core is published under AGPL-3.0, the editor is free, and nothing leaves your browser. If you searched for an open-source FireShot alternative, that's the short version.
Side by side
| Compared | OpenCapture | FireShot |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Visible area / selected area | Yes | Yes |
| Capture full page | Yes | Yes |
| Export to PNG | Yes | Yes |
| Export to PDF | Yes | Yes |
| Multipage PDFpaginated, not one tall page | No | Yespaid feature |
| Complete editorcrop, draw, text, blur | Yes | Yespaid feature |
| Unlimited undo | Yes | Yespaid feature |
| Watermarking | Yespaid feature | Yespaid feature |
| Capture history | Yeslast 50, stored on your device | Yespaid feature |
| Batch captureevery open tab, or a list of URLs | No | Yesvisible part free, full page paid |
| UploadingFTP, HTTP, social, cloud drives | No | Yespaid feature |
| JavaScript APIembed capture buttons into your own site | No | Yes |
| Browsers | ||
| Chrome | Yes | Yes |
| Microsoft Edge | Yes | Yes |
| Firefox | Yes | Yes |
| Other browsersofficially supported builds | No | YesOpera, Safari |
| Open source | ||
| Open source | YesAGPL-3.0-or-later | No |
| Pricing | ||
| Billing | One-time | Annual or one-time |
| Price | $51,000 credits, one-time | $39.95/yearor $99.95 once |
What you're actually choosing between
Where the paywall sits
FireShot's model is a free tier that captures and exports, plus a paid Pro licence that unlocks the editing toolset. If you only ever capture and save, the free tier covers it.
OpenCapture puts the line somewhere else entirely: everything involved in capturing, editing and exporting is free, and the single paid feature is watermarking — tiling a logo or text across an export, which is a publishing task rather than a screenshotting one. If your reason for looking at FireShot Pro was the editor, that's the gap this fills.
Open source versus closed source
FireShot is closed source and has been for its whole life. OpenCapture's core is AGPL-3.0-or-later on GitHub. For a tool that by definition sees every page you point it at — including the logged-in ones — being able to read the code is a meaningful difference, particularly if you need to justify the install to someone else.
This is usually the reason people go looking for an open-source FireShot alternative in the first place: not ideology, but that a screenshot extension has broad access to page content, and "read the source" is a stronger assurance than "trust the vendor". The AGPL also means any hosted derivative has to publish its changes.
Where FireShot is the better pick
If you have already bought a Pro licence and it works, switching gains you very little — and FireShot has export destinations OpenCapture has no equivalent for, like sending a capture straight to OneNote or an email client. It also has a JavaScript API for building capture into your own site, and can work through a list of URLs rather than one page at a time — if your use case is volume or integration, that is a real gap here. If you have not bought it yet, the editor you would be paying for is free here.
No licence key, no trial timer
Install it, capture a page, and see whether the editor does what you needed Pro for.
Questions people ask
Is FireShot open source?
No. FireShot is closed-source and has been throughout its life.
Is there an open-source FireShot alternative?
OpenCapture. Its core extension is published under AGPL-3.0-or-later on GitHub, so you can read exactly how it handles the pages you point it at. It captures full pages to PNG or PDF, includes crop, annotation and blur, and ships for Chrome, Edge and Firefox.
Is there a free alternative to FireShot Pro?
OpenCapture includes its complete editor — crop, draw, text, blur, unlimited undo — at no cost, with no Pro tier to buy. Capturing a full page and exporting it as a PDF are free in both products; the editing is where FireShot draws its licence line and OpenCapture does not.
Does OpenCapture work in Firefox like FireShot does?
Yes. OpenCapture ships Manifest V3 builds for Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Firefox.
Is OpenCapture a subscription?
No. Everything except watermarking is free, and watermarking is unlocked once with a one-time purchase rather than a recurring plan.
Can OpenCapture save a long page as a single PDF?
Yes. However long the page is, it is stitched into one image and can be exported as a single PNG or a single PDF.
Does OpenCapture send anything to a server?
No. Captures have no upload path — every step runs inside the browser. The only network requests OpenCapture makes are for the optional watermark unlock, and no screenshot is ever part of them.
Which parts of OpenCapture are not open source?
One: the optional watermark module, which is proprietary and ships as a separate component. Everything else — capture, the editor, blur, and PNG and PDF export — is in the AGPL-3.0-or-later repository.