Output formats

outputFormat controls what lands in the content object of the response. Request any combination - each format is produced from the same fetched page, so one request can return several views at once.

{ "url": "https://example.com", "outputFormat": ["html", "text", "markdown", "json"] }

Format	Response field	What you get
html (default)	content.html	The page HTML after preprocessing.
text	content.text	Tag-free plain text: scripts/styles dropped, block tags become line breaks, entities decoded.
markdown	content.markdown	Headings become #/##…, links become [text](url) with absolute URLs - the best input for LLM pipelines.
json	content.json	Structured output of extraction: extractRules fields, emails, links.

Example: one request, three views

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.scrapeit.io/api/v1/scrape/web" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_SCRAPEIT_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://example.com",
    "outputFormat": ["text", "markdown", "json"],
    "extractRules": { "title": "h1" }
  }'

Node.js

const response = await fetch('https://api.scrapeit.io/api/v1/scrape/web', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    'x-api-key': process.env.SCRAPEIT_API_KEY ?? 'YOUR_SCRAPEIT_API_KEY',
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    url: 'https://example.com',
    outputFormat: ['text', 'markdown', 'json'],
    extractRules: { title: 'h1' },
  }),
});
const { data } = await response.json();
console.log(data.content.markdown);

Python

import os
import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.scrapeit.io/api/v1/scrape/web",
    json={
        "url": "https://example.com",
        "outputFormat": ["text", "markdown", "json"],
        "extractRules": {"title": "h1"},
    },
    headers={"x-api-key": os.environ.get("SCRAPEIT_API_KEY", "YOUR_SCRAPEIT_API_KEY")},
)
print(response.json()["data"]["content"]["markdown"])

Response (content fragment):

{
  "content": {
    "text": "Example Domain This domain is for use in illustrative examples…",
    "markdown": "# Example Domain\n\nThis domain is for use in illustrative examples…\n[More information…](https://www.iana.org/domains/example)",
    "json": { "extractRules": { "title": "Example Domain" } }
  }
}

JSON is added automatically

When extractRules, extractEmails or extractLinks produce data, content.json is included even if you did not list json in outputFormat.

Shrinking the payload

Three preprocessing switches run before every format is produced, so they shrink html, text, markdown and extraction input alike:

Parameter	Type	Effect	Example
includeOnlyTags	string[]	Keep only the listed tag blocks (allow-list).	["main", "article", "table"]
excludeTags	string[]	Strip the listed tag blocks (deny-list, applied after the allow-list).	["script", "style", "nav", "footer"]
removeBase64Images	boolean	Remove inline data:image/... src/srcset attributes - often megabytes of noise.	true

{
  "url": "https://news.example.com/article/42",
  "outputFormat": ["markdown"],
  "includeOnlyTags": ["article"],
  "excludeTags": ["aside", "footer"],
  "removeBase64Images": true
}

This pattern - article only, junk stripped, markdown out - is the cheapest way to feed pages into an LLM: the payload usually drops by 80-95 %.

Raw HTML artifact

Independent of outputFormat, the fetched raw HTML is persisted as a raw_html artifact in the file registry for your plan's retention window, so you can re-process pages later without paying for a re-scrape.

Related pages

• Data extraction - fill content.json with structured fields.
• Request cost - output formats do not change the price; rendering and proxy class do.