Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling
Hi HN, Nick here. We're super excited to officially launch PDF.js Express [1]. PDF.js Express wraps a modern React UI around the PDF.js rendering engine to enable PDF annotation, form filling, and signing inside your web app. We've also made some improvements to PDF.js text search, and taken a different approach to how the viewer uses the PDF.js rendering API, resulting in sharp graphics at any zoom magnification [2]. Based on our research, more than 70% of those who try to implement these features on top of PDF.js find it too difficult or time-intensive [3]. For those who are successful,…
PDF.js Express is a web-based tool that adds annotation, form filling, and e-signature capabilities to PDF documents within applications. Built as a React interface around the PDF.js rendering engine, it addresses the… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling launched in 2020; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
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Out-of-the-box annotation, PDF form fill, and signing.
2020 · pdfjs.express · its alternatives →
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I built EmbedPDF: an MIT-licensed, open-source PDF viewer that aims to match all of Adobe Acrobat’s paid features… for free. Already working: - Annotations (highlight, sticky notes, free text, ink) - True redaction (content actually removed) - Search, text selection, zoom, rotation - Runs fully in the browser, no server needed - Drop-in SDK for React, Vue, Preact, vanilla JS Why? Acrobat is heavy, closed, and pricey. I wanted something lightweight, hackable, and embeddable anywhere. Demo: https://app.embedpdf.com/ Website: https://www.embedpdf.com/ GitHub:…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3TITetris in a PDF▲1,289
I realized that the PDF engines of modern desktop browsers (PDFium and PDF.js) support JavaScript with enough I/O primitives to make a basic game like Tetris. It was a bit tricky to find a union of features that work in both engines, but in the end it turns out that showing/hiding annotation "fields" works well to make monochrome pixels, and keyboard input can be achieved by typing in a text input box. All in all it's quite janky but a nice reminder of how general purpose PDF scripting can be. The linked PDF is all ASCII so you can just open it in a text editor, or have a look at…
2025 · th0mas.nl · its alternatives →
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PDFShift▲386Convert any HTML to PDF with a single POST request.
2018 · pdfshift.io · its alternatives →
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Implement scanyourpdf.com in JavaScript. No backend servers needed.
2022 · lookscanned.io · its alternatives →
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Enable your website visitors to fill, annotate, merge and edit PDF files without leaving your website. Use the iframe, Javascript script or React component.
2023 · simplepdf.github.io · its alternatives →
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Anvil PDF API▲185Twilio for PDFs: esign, fill, generate PDFs with one API
2021 · useanvil.com · its alternatives →
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The easiest way to programmatically populate any PDF
2020 · useanvil.com · its alternatives →
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Fill out and generate PDFs with a simple API request. Design templates in our drag-and-drop editor, POST your JSON data, and download a finished PDF in seconds.
2017 · formapi.io · its alternatives →
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React-print-pdf is a new open-source library that simplifies PDF creation with React. You can design your PDFs like a website, integrate data from your database to your documents, and reuse community components and templates or build your own. Created by three friends who were frustrated by existing solutions and wanted to make PDF creation easier for everyone. Now it’s yours. What are your thoughts on it ?!
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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🤖 A Node queue API for generating PDFs using headless Chrome. Comes with a CLI, S3 storage and webhooks for notifying subscribers about generated PDFs - esbenp/pdf-bot
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Loads a web page in headless Chrome using Puppeteer and prints it to PDF. The input is a JSON object and output is a PDF file.
2017 · apify.com · its alternatives →
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2014 · chrome.google.com · its alternatives →
- 17PO
Fill in PDF templates with the PDF Otter API. Use it to accept eSignatures in your app, repeatedly fill in common PDF forms, or build large scale apps around PDF documents.
2017 · pdfotter.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, creator of EmbedPDF here. I recently posted my open-source PDF viewer here, and one thing I really value is that it runs completely offline. I started wondering if we could push that further: could we do full ML layout analysis (detecting tables, headers, columns) directly in the browser? To my surprise, it actually works. The catch: It is far from production-ready. It crashes on most phones, and on older computers, it can be incredibly slow. The why: I believe the future of document processing is local. Many users work with sensitive documents (bank statements, legal contracts) and…
2025 · embedpdf.com · its alternatives →
- 20TA
Hello HN! It kept surprising me how much of a hassle it is to generate a PDF with decent HTML5 rendering from my SaaS apps. I tried several free libs and APIs but ended up with botched rendering a lot of times. So I set out to simplify this chore by creating an AWS hosted HTML to PDF conversion API that's based on Chrome. This API will allow a dev to just send the HTML to our API and get a PDF in response without having to worry about running and managing Chrome somewhere in their infra. I just finished the first version of my landing page and hosted pdf generation API…
2018 · its alternatives →
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Hi HN! I've been working on SimplePDF to solve a problem I encounter weekly: filling out non-editable PDFs [1] --- # About SimplePDF - The documents you load, edit, fill never see the light of my server, everything is processed locally – no remote uploading anything. This includes the PDF generation. - There are no analytics / third party tracking your every move (I do collect usage data, but it's fully anonymous and processed and stored on my server): therefore no annoying cookie banner. You can read more on the Privacy Policy [2] - If someone before you has filled the same document,…
2022 · simplepdf.eu · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →