The best PDF generation APIs in 2026

Quick picks by situation

If you only have a minute, start here. Each pick is a starting point for a shortlist, not a verdict. The sections below explain why.

• Invoices, statements and reports that run over several pages: CastPDF, or DocRaptor if you need accessibility tagging.
• A few hundred documents a month on a small budget: PDFMonkey’s €5 Starter, or PDFShift’s $9 Starter if your HTML is already finished.
• A designer who wants to drag boxes around instead of writing HTML: CraftMyPDF, or APITemplate.io with its visual editor.
• A ready-made connector for Zapier or Make: PDFMonkey, APITemplate.io and CraftMyPDF all list both.
• Very high volume of finished HTML: PDFShift, whose largest plans go up to 250,000 credits a month.
• Documents that must never leave your own servers: Gotenberg, which you run yourself as a Docker container.

Prices side by side

The cheapest monthly plan that includes each volume, from each vendor's public pricing page (checked October 2026, before tax). Where a vendor sells extra documents on a smaller plan, that can cost less than the plan shown; the text below works it out where it matters. CastPDF counts one PDF per document, whatever its page count.

PDFMonkey: prices are in euros, as its pricing page shows them.

PDFShift: One credit is one document per 5 MB of output.

How we compared them

CastPDF is our product, so read this page knowing that. We tried to make it useful even if you pick something else. Here is exactly what we did and did not do.

• What we did: we read each vendor’s public pricing page and documentation, and wrote down what they publish. The sources table at the end links every page we read, with the date we checked it.
• What we did not do: we did not render test documents in the other tools. So the notes on print quality describe each engine and its documented features. They are not results of our own side-by-side test.
• When a fact is missing: we write "not stated". That means we did not find it on the vendor’s own pages. It does not mean the feature is missing.
• Prices: list prices in the currency each vendor shows, monthly billing unless we say otherwise.

The five criteria

1. Print quality on long documents. A one-page receipt looks fine almost anywhere. A 12-page statement shows the differences: does the table header repeat, do rows split in half, can you print "Page 3 of 12"?
2. Template editing. Who changes the layout next month? A developer in HTML and CSS, or someone on the operations team who does not code?
3. Price at volume. Not just the entry plan. We work out the real bill at 5,000 and 100,000 documents, including extra documents where a vendor sells them.
4. Limits and billing behaviour. What happens on the day you hit your plan’s limit: does rendering stop, continue at a known price, or wait for you to upgrade?
5. EU hosting. Where the documents are made and stored, which matters if they hold customer names, addresses or amounts.

The seven options, one by one

The order is by kind of tool, not by score. First come the template services you fill with JSON: two code-based ones, then two with visual editors. Then two converters that take finished HTML, and last a self-hosted engine. Inside each pair, the lower entry price comes first. That is why CastPDF is second.

1. PDFMonkey

• Best for: small and medium volumes of documents built from an HTML and Liquid template.
• Strength: the lowest paid entry point here, €5 a month for 300 documents, plus listed connectors for Zapier, Make, n8n, Workato, Bubble and Glide.
• Weakness: the free plan has 20 documents a month and cannot load external images, fonts or CSS, so a realistic test needs the 30-day trial.
• Going over: optional pay-as-you-go from €0.008 down to €0.005 a document, or Boost packs at €5 per 1,000.

2. CastPDF

• Best for: multi-page documents and volume that grows, from developers who are happy with HTML and CSS.
• Strength: print mode repeats table headers on every page, keeps rows whole and supports page numbers and running headers, with fonts already installed. See repeating table headers.
• Weakness: no visual design tools and no ready-made connectors for automation tools yet. Layout is HTML and CSS with a live preview; a Simple mode form lets anyone edit the sample data.
• Going over: paid plans continue at a fixed price per 1,000 ($9.00 on Starter, $1.75 on Scale), up to a spending cap you set. Unused PDFs roll over for one month.

3. APITemplate.io

• Best for: teams where some people prefer a visual editor and others want raw HTML.
• Strength: both a visual (WYSIWYG) editor and an HTML editor, and connectors for Zapier, Make, n8n and Airtable.
• Weakness: templates are capped per plan (3 on Free, 20 on Basic, 180 on Standard), and the listed plans stop at 25,000 documents.
• Going over: no overage price is listed. It emails you at 80% and 100%, and you upgrade by hand.

4. CraftMyPDF

• Best for: non-technical people who design documents by dragging elements onto a page.
• Strength: a drag-and-drop editor, with Zapier, Make and Bubble connectors on every plan.
• Weakness: template caps are tight on smaller plans (6 on Lite, 15 on Plus), and credits reset each month without rolling over.
• Going over: emails at 80% and 100% of your credits. An overage price is not stated in the facts we checked.

5. PDFShift

• Best for: converting finished HTML or a live URL at high volume, when your app already builds the HTML.
• Strength: a long ladder of plans, up to 250,000 credits for $499 a month, on a Chromium engine.
• Weakness: no templates: you build and send the full HTML yourself. One credit covers a document per 5 MB of output, so large files use more than one.
• Going over: extra credits from $40 per 1,000 on Starter down to $15 per 1,000 on Shift 50k.

6. DocRaptor

• Best for: demanding print layouts and documents that must be tagged for accessibility.
• Strength: it runs on Prince, a commercial engine made for print layout, with automatic and CSS-based tagging aimed at WCAG 2.0, Section 508 and PDF/UA.
• Weakness: the highest price per document in this list, for example $75 a month for 1,250 documents on Premium.
• Going over: a per-document price tied to your plan; the rates are not on the signup page.

7. Gotenberg

• Best for: teams with their own servers who want no vendor and no per-document bill.
• Strength: free, MIT-licensed software that runs as a Docker container, with Chromium, LibreOffice and other engines inside.
• Weakness: you run it. Scaling, updates, memory, fonts and monitoring are your work, and there is no template store or billing dashboard.
• Going over: there is no plan limit. Your limit is the hardware you give it.

The five criteria side by side

For the hosted services other than CastPDF, the pages in our sources did not say where documents are made. Ask the vendor before you sign if that matters for your contracts.

What 5,000 and 100,000 documents a month really cost

The price table above picks the cheapest plan that includes each volume. Some vendors also sell extra documents on top of a smaller plan, and that can be cheaper. Here is that math, done honestly for both ends of the scale.

At 5,000 documents a month

• PDFMonkey: Pro+ includes 5,000 for €60. Pro at €15 plus two Boost packs of 1,000 at €5 each comes to €25, which is the better deal.
• CastPDF: Growth includes 10,000 for $49. Starter at $19 plus 2,500 extra PDFs at $9.00 per 1,000 comes to $41.50, which is cheaper. The default spending cap of $38 covers that overage.
• APITemplate.io: no overage price is listed, so you need PDF Standard at $89, or $69 a month on yearly billing.
• CraftMyPDF: no overage price in the facts we checked, so the plan that covers 5,000 is Professional at $99.
• PDFShift: Growth includes 5,000 credits for $39, as long as each document stays under 5 MB.
• DocRaptor: Max includes 5,000 for $149.

At 100,000 documents a month

• PDFShift: Shift 100k at $249, the lowest list price here for this volume.
• CastPDF: Scale includes 200,000 for $299. Pro plus 50,000 extra at $3.50 per 1,000 comes to $304, so Scale is the better pick at this point.
• PDFMonkey: Premium at €300 covers 60,000. The other 40,000 at €5 per 1,000 in Boost packs adds €200, about €500 in all.
• CraftMyPDF: Business at $499 covers up to 150,000.
• APITemplate.io: its listed plans stop at 25,000 documents. DocRaptor: above 40,000 it quotes a custom Enterprise price.
• Gotenberg: no licence cost. You pay for the servers, and for the hours someone spends keeping them healthy.

PDFShift wins on raw price at high volume, and PDFMonkey wins at the small end. CastPDF sits in the middle on price and adds print features and rollover. Pick the trade-off that matches your documents.

What happens on the day you hit your limit

This is the criterion people check last and regret first. A busy month, a backfill job or a bug in a loop can use a month of documents in an afternoon.

• Upgrade by hand. APITemplate.io lists no overage price: it sends alerts, and you move to a bigger plan yourself. Your bill stays fixed, so plan the upgrade before a busy month.
• Continue at a known price. PDFMonkey, PDFShift and CastPDF all sell extra documents. CastPDF adds a spending cap, which starts at twice the plan price and which you can change.
• Warn early. CastPDF, APITemplate.io and CraftMyPDF all email at 80% and 100%. CastPDF also emails when overage starts and when the cap is reached.
• No plan at all. Gotenberg has no document limit; the only ceiling is the hardware you run it on.

Test any shortlist with your longest document

Whatever you shortlist, test the document that worries you most, not a demo invoice. A 300-row table is a good stress test: it shows at once whether headers repeat and whether rows break in half.

Here is that test for CastPDF. It uses a test key, which is free, never counted and adds a watermark. The quickstart explains keys and the request.

curl https://api.castpdf.com/v1/pdf \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CASTPDF_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"html": "<table><thead><tr><th>Row</th><th>Amount</th></tr></thead><tbody>{% for i in (1..rows) %}<tr><td>Line {{ i }}</td><td>{{ i | times: 3 }}.00</td></tr>{% endfor %}</tbody></table>", "data": {"rows": 300}, "mode": "print", "format": "A4"}' \
  --output stress-test.pdf

Open the file and check page 2 onward: the header row should sit at the top of every page. Then run the same table through the other tools on your list. When you are ready for live documents, the pricing page lists every plan, starting with 100 free PDFs a month.

Sources

Every fact about another product on this page comes from that product's own pages, checked October 2026. CastPDF's prices and limits come from our pricing page.