The best HTML to PDF APIs, with prices
Every price below comes from the vendor's own pricing page, at or nearest the 10,000 documents a month band. Rows for Pdfcrowd, CraftMyPDF and ScreenshotOne checked 2026-10-03; the rest 2026-09-11. Engines are printed as disclosed, or as not disclosed where the vendor stays silent, and every row carries the catch the ranking roundups leave out. The short verdict: Gotenberg is the free self-hosted route; webcapture Pro costs 0.38 cents at 5,000 and Scale about 0.197 cents at 35,000. The engine and catch columns decide the rest.
The field
| API | Engine | Price around 10k/mo | Free tier | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DocRaptor | Prince (disclosed) | 2.98 cents at 5,000 | 5 docs + unlimited watermarked tests | about eight times the cheapest measured rate, and 12 cents a document at the smaller bands |
| PDFShift | Chromium (disclosed) | 0.396 cents at 25,000 | 50/month | free tier 30-second timeout |
| PDFEndpoint | not disclosed | 0.39 cents at 10,000 | 100/month, permanent | engine not stated on their pages |
| pdflayer | not disclosed | 0.40 cents at 10,000 | 100/month | free tier is non-commercial only |
| APITemplate.io | not disclosed | 0.63 cents at 3,000 | 50/month | template-first, not a general renderer |
| Pdfcrowd | not disclosed | 0.61 cents at 10,000 | free trial | credits meter output size: one credit per 0.5Mb of rendered output |
| CraftMyPDF | not disclosed | 0.83 cents at 12,000 | 50/month + 3 templates | one shared credit ledger: e-signature and watermark spend the same credits |
| ScreenshotOne | not disclosed | 0.79 cents at 10,000 screenshots | 100 screenshots | billed per screenshot; PDF is a side endpoint with no option surface |
| PDF.co | not disclosed | credit pool, per-doc rate unpublished | trial only | credits-per-conversion not published |
| ConvertAPI | not disclosed | unit price not rendered on their pricing page | 250 sign-up conversions | concurrency is plan-gated: 1, 2, 3, 4, then unlimited on Enterprise |
| Api2Pdf | Chrome + wkhtmltopdf + LibreOffice (disclosed) | usage-metered per MB and second | one month of free credit | unpredictable bill shape |
| Gotenberg | Chromium (disclosed) | free, self-hosted | n/a | you own the container ops |
| webcapture | Chromium (disclosed) | 0.38 cents at 5,000 | 50/month, full API | that is us: we publish this table |
How to choose
Three questions decide it, in order. First, the volume band: below a few hundred documents a month a free tier wins outright, and from the thousands upward the per-document rate at your band is the number that matters; across this field it spans a factor of eight. Second, the engine requirement: if the output has to match a browser page exactly, only the disclosed-Chromium rows qualify, because a "not disclosed" engine is a gamble taken with your layout. Third, ops appetite: if you can run a container and page yourself, the free self-hosted row wins on price; if you cannot, you are choosing among the hosted rows on rate, free tier, and candor.
What the roundups omit
Search for this topic and most top-ten results are lists with no prices, no engines, and no catches, ranked toward whoever pays the affiliate cut. The catch column above is that content gap, named: each row states the one thing the vendor's own page buries, from the 30-second timeout on PDFShift's free tier to DocRaptor's 2.98 cents a document at 5,000. PDFShift's credit counts one per 5Mb of output, so a 14Mb document costs 3 (re-checked 2026-10-03). Its opt-in Boost overage lists at three cents a credit, 3.1 times the in-plan rate (re-checked 2026-10-24). A roundup without a catch column is an ad. Leaning PDFShift? webcapture vs PDFShift prices the two contracts side by side.
About ours
webcapture is the last row, and the bias is disclosed in the row itself. Pro costs 0.38 cents a document at 5,000 a month; Scale costs about 0.197 cents at 35,000. Both have a 429-not-overage policy: bursts beyond quota wait instead of billing. Where we genuinely lose, the recommendation is not softened: if you want free and can run containers, Gotenberg is the best answer. These rates use different volume bands, so compare the total at your own volume rather than extrapolating one row. Our plans are published on our pricing page.
Going deeper: the webcapture product page states engine, pricing, and a curl quick start on one page, the free HTML to PDF API page prices the $0 route in detail, HTML to PDF without losing formatting explains why converted pages break and how browser rendering keeps them intact, and open source HTML to PDF APIs, compared prices the self-hosted routes. For capability rather than price, the capability matrix sets eight vendors on the same fourteen rows, each cell read from the vendor's own documentation. The wkhtmltopdf alternatives hub maps the archived tool flag by flag.
Method
Checked 2026-09-11 against each vendor's own pricing page, printing engines as disclosed and prices as listed; DocRaptor's plan row re-checked against their plans page on 2026-09-19. Rows for Pdfcrowd, CraftMyPDF and ScreenshotOne checked 2026-10-03; the rest 2026-09-11. Source URLs, PDFShift's Boost overage, Api2Pdf's free-credit terms, and ConvertAPI's concurrency ladder checked 2026-10-24. Questions or corrections: hello@webcapture.io.
Render your first page in seconds
Mint a key, POST a URL, and the finished document comes back in the same response; pass ?wait=false for a job ticket with poll and download URLs. The first 50 renders a month are free, and there is no credit card. Not ready for a key? The free URL to PDF tool renders public pages without one.