Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to ThePDFApi, a Chrome Based PDF Generation API Hosted on AWS
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…
ThePDFApi is an AWS-hosted API that converts HTML to PDF using Chrome rendering. It's designed for software developers who need reliable PDF generation from their applications without managing their own Chrome… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. ThePDFApi, a Chrome Based PDF Generation API Hosted on AWS launched in 2018; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
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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 →
- 2
PDFShift▲386Convert any HTML to PDF with a single POST request.
2018 · pdfshift.io · its alternatives →
- 3PA
Hi HN, Arek here. We’re super excited to officially launch PSPDFKit API [1]. PSPDFKit API is a collection of HTTP APIs that enable you to convert, generate, and edit documents without running any service on your infrastructure. What differentiates our API from others is that you can chain together multiple “actions” as part of a single API request. For example, you can convert, OCR, watermark, edit, and flatten a document — all in one call. Available actions [2]: - PDF Generator - PDF Converter - Image Converter - OCR - Watermark - Merge - Split - Duplicate - Delete - Flatten Our…
2022 · its alternatives →
- 4
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 →
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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 →
- 7PJ
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,…
2020 · its alternatives →
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HelloPDF▲172Generating a PDF from a URL has never been easier
2019 · hellopdf.co · its alternatives →
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Paperplane▲166Web page to PDF conversion API using Chrome
2018 · converterer.com · its alternatives →
- 15
GeneratePDFs ▲8Convert HTML to clean PDFs with one simple API call
Dec 2025 · generatepdfs.com · its alternatives →
- 16
Anvil PDF API▲185Twilio for PDFs: esign, fill, generate PDFs with one API
2021 · useanvil.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 →
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- 22AA
Simplest and cheapest REST API to generate PDF from HTML, Office Docs, and merge PDFs
2018 · api2pdf.com · its alternatives →
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A flexible Web API and template editor for PDF generation
2020 · pdfgeneratorapi.com · 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 →