PDF Generator API

PDFend is a modern PDF generator API for developers and AI agents. Send HTML, get a PDF. Everything you'd expect from a Stripe-quality developer experience — typed SDKs, great docs, a generous free tier, and an MCP server so Claude and ChatGPT can create PDFs directly.

There are at least a dozen PDF generation APIs today. This page compares the well-known ones — DocRaptor, PDFMonkey, CraftMyPDF, PDFShift — with PDFend, so you can pick the right one. Spoiler: if you're building a modern product (2024+ stack, AI features, typed SDKs mandatory) PDFend is designed for you.

Highlights only — each cell is a link to the relevant docs page or alternative landing on either vendor's site. Prices as of April 2026.

PDFend is a strong default if any of these are true for your team:

• You write TypeScript or Python and want typed SDKs by default.
• You're using or planning to use AI agents (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor) and want them to generate PDFs natively.
• You're evaluating PDF APIs for a new product and want to ship on the free tier before paying.
• You're migrating off wkhtmltopdf and want the new stack to be modern from day one.
• You need a template engine, webhooks, and a logs viewer — not just a render endpoint.

Being honest, there are cases where another option is better:

• You need PDF/A for archival compliance today. Use DocRaptor, which has it natively. PDFend ships PDF/A in 2026.
• You want a drag-and-drop visual template editor. Use CraftMyPDF or PDFGeneratorAPI. PDFend stays HTML/CSS.
• You need Office formats (XLSX, DOCX) from the same API. Use DocRaptor or add a separate tool alongside PDFend.

This is everything needed to generate a PDF with PDFend from scratch — no library, just curl:

curl -X POST https://api.pdfend.com/v1/generate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer pk_live_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "html": "<h1>Hello, PDFend!</h1>",
    "options": { "format": "A4", "print_background": true }
  }'

{
  "id": "pdf_01HXABC",
  "status": "completed",
  "url": "https://files.pdfend.com/pdf_01HXABC.pdf",
  "pages": 1,
  "size": 18420,
  "duration_ms": 784
}

PDFend pricing is a single monthly fee per plan, which includes a fixed number of PDFs. You don't pay different rates for different document types or formats. Plan limits are hard caps — your bill never grows on its own, and you can upgrade anytime when you need more.