Free HTML to PDF API: three hosted free tiers, one free month and four open source tools

Free HTML to PDF API options at a glance

These three hosted HTML to PDF APIs have a standing free tier: Doppio allows up to 400 documents a month, PDFShift 50 credits and DocRaptor 5 documents. Api2Pdf gives one free month, and four open source tools cost nothing but the server you run them on. CraftMyPDF is not a raw HTML to PDF converter: it fills a template designed in an editor, which the last section covers.

Hosted options: free tiers at Doppio, PDFShift and DocRaptor, one free month at Api2Pdf

Doppio's Basic plan is free, with up to 400 documents a month and 1 template, and Doppio says there is no time limit. Below its Pro plan, renders pause at the quota until the next billing cycle unless you upgrade.

PDFShift's free tier has a 15 MB file limit and a 30 second timeout, and it counts one credit per 5 MB. DocRaptor's Free plan allows no overage, and Basic is $15 a month for 125 documents. DocRaptor says it uses the Prince PDF generator.

Api2Pdf gives new accounts one month of free credit, then charges $1 a month plus usage. Its endpoints cover Chrome, wkhtmltopdf and LibreOffice, with 2 GB of RAM and 90 seconds a request.

Pick Doppio for the largest hosted free allowance here. Pick DocRaptor for test documents that are always free, PDFShift for files up to 15 MB on its free tier, and Api2Pdf for usage billing after the free month.

Open source tools you host: Puppeteer, WeasyPrint, Gotenberg and wkhtmltopdf

Puppeteer is Apache-2.0 licensed, and npm i puppeteer downloads a compatible Chrome during installation. WeasyPrint is BSD-3-Clause, renders HTML and CSS without a browser and needs Python and the Pango system library. Gotenberg is MIT licensed, a Docker-based API for converting documents to PDF through Chromium and LibreOffice. wkhtmltopdf is LGPL-3.0, and its status page says the WebKit inside has not been updated since 2012 and warns against untrusted HTML.

These tools carry no per-document fee, so the library route is the better choice when you already run a server, your volume is high or the HTML has to stay on your own infrastructure. The cost is upkeep: you install, host and update the renderer yourself.

When a template API replaces the HTML altogether

Take a Bubble app founder who wants shipping labels and packing slips without writing HTML-to-PDF code. CraftMyPDF's editor needs no HTML or CSS, and an HTML component takes HTML and CSS inside a template when you want it. The Bubble.io integration is listed on every CraftMyPDF plan, Free included. CraftMyPDF's help page calls its Bubble plugin official, and the plugin generates a PDF from a workflow and can save its URL to a database field.

CraftMyPDF's help page says Bubble limits the plugin to 30 seconds, and its asynchronous guide uses Bubble's backend workflows for documents that take longer.

CraftMyPDF's Free plan gives 50 PDFs or images a month and 3 templates, with no credit card; Lite, the first paid plan, is $29 a month on monthly billing. For raw HTML to PDF, CraftMyPDF points to its sister product APITemplate.io. The HTML to PDF API page covers paid options, the DocRaptor alternative page prices them, and the free PDF generation API page lists free tiers that need no HTML at all.