Your first scan in five minutes

First, without an account

If you only want to see the output, open the demo, pick a sample photo and scan it. No signup, no key, and you can compare the result with the original photo.

Step 1: get an API key

• Create an account. Signup includes 50 free credits and needs no card.
• Open the dashboard and go to API keys.
• Create a key and copy it. The key is shown once, treat it like a password.

Step 2: first API call

POST one image as multipart form data to the crop endpoint. With binary=true, which is the default, the response body is the processed image itself, and -o writes it to a file.

curl -X POST "https://www.scankit.io/crop" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -F "file=@document.jpg" \
  -F "output_width=1536" \
  -F "filter=white" \
  -o scan.jpg

The same call in Python:

import requests

with open("document.jpg", "rb") as fh:
    response = requests.post(
        "https://www.scankit.io/crop",
        headers={"X-API-Key": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
        files={"file": ("document.jpg", fh, "image/jpeg")},
        data={"output_width": 1536, "filter": "white"},
        timeout=60,
    )

response.raise_for_status()
with open("scan.jpg", "wb") as out:
    out.write(response.content)

And in Node, without any SDK:

import fs from 'node:fs';

const body = new FormData();
body.append('file', new Blob([fs.readFileSync('document.jpg')]), 'document.jpg');
body.append('output_width', '1536');
body.append('filter', 'white');

const response = await fetch('https://www.scankit.io/crop', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'X-API-Key': 'YOUR_API_KEY' },
  body,
});

const scan = Buffer.from(await response.arrayBuffer());
fs.writeFileSync('scan.jpg', scan);

What you get back is a clean, straight, tightly cropped image of the document, ready for OCR, AI extraction or your archive. Every call costs one credit, and a new account starts with fifty.

Step 3: the parameters you will actually use

Send several pages in one request with the files parameter, or call the endpoint once per page. Both are supported, the multi page path keeps the pages in one response.

Step 4: capture in the browser

If your own users should take the photo, load the SDK from our CDN and let it own the capture flow. The SDK is served from scankit.io, so there is nothing to build and nothing to publish.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://www.scankit.io/sdk/scankit-sdk.css" />
<div id="scan-area"></div>

<script src="https://www.scankit.io/sdk/scankit-sdk.min.js"></script>
<script>
  const scanner = new ScanKit({
    target: '#scan-area',
    apiKey: 'YOUR_API_KEY',
    onScanComplete: (result) => {
      // result.image is the finished scan as a Blob
      uploadToYourBackend(result.image);
    },
  });

  scanner.init();
</script>

The scanner calls your onScanComplete handler with the finished scan. A hosted scanner is the alternative when you cannot hold a key in the frontend at all: you create the scanner in the dashboard and send the link to whoever should scan.

Credits, limits and errors

• One credit per scan call (crop, rectify, doc_axis_warp). Fifty free credits on signup.
• A thousand scan requests per hour and key. The request above that limit is refused with 429 and a Retry-After header.
• Authentication works with the X-API-Key header, an Authorization Bearer token, or an api_key query parameter. The header is the recommended one.

Typical error responses, in the order you will meet them:

{
  "errors": [
    { "title": "Missing API Key" }
  ]
}

Where to go next