webcapture vs PDFShift

webcapture vs PDFShift: what each one is

webcapture: hosted HTML to PDF and extraction API, Chromium disclosed, Pro at $19 a month. Engine: headless Chromium, disclosed. Ops: none: hosted, keys self-serve. Cost: one render is one billable document, any size; quota answers 429 and never bills overage. Best for teams billed per document that want Markdown output and per-call dark mode.

PDFShift: hosted PDF and image API operating since 2018, Chromium disclosed, tiers from $24 a month. Engine: headless Chromium, disclosed. Ops: none: hosted, self-serve. Cost: credits: one per 5Mb of output, Boost $24 for 2,500 up to Business $99 for 25,000, opt-in overage on top. Best for teams that need templates, S3 delivery, HIPAA processing, or PDF encryption.

webcapture vs PDFShift at a glance

PDFShift cells re-checked 2026-10-03 against the live pricing and OpenAPI spec; Boost overage re-checked 2026-10-24. Ours is the published rate card.

Feature by feature

✓ documented in the vendor's own docs; ✗ absent from the vendor's documented surface; ◐ shipped with a gate. Hover a row for detail. Every mark checked 2026-10-05 against both vendors' published docs and API references.

The verdict: when each one wins

What PDFShift has that we do not

The residue that is still theirs alone: stored templates with full CRUD, engine version pinning through their X-Processor-Version header, and the is_gdpr and log_request privacy flags. HIPAA processing with a public BAA is theirs too; our side ships the zero-residue phi rendering mode, gated on the executed BAA the operator program is still completing. S3 delivery is a credential distinction rather than a capability gap: pdfshift's s3_destination pushes to your bucket through customer credentials stored on their side, while our destination parameter takes a caller-signed presigned PUT URL, so the service never holds your cloud credentials. The feature grid above carries the full mark-by-mark picture, dated, so this paragraph only has to name what remains.

Scale is our largest self-serve tier: $69 a month for 35,000 renders, which undercuts the Business plan's $99 for 25,000 on both price and volume. Past 35,000 renders a month the quota returns 429 like every tier; there is no custom tier above Scale.

How this connects

Switching from pdfshift is not a rewrite at the simple end: POST /v3/convert/pdf here accepts their request shape (source as a URL, format as the paper size, landscape, margin, quality, delay, timeout) and answers with raw bytes, with errors in their envelope, so a base URL and key change moves a script that converts URLs. The step-by-step migration manual walks that swap line by line, including the parameters this endpoint answers 422 to; nothing is dropped silently.

Wider than this pair: the capability matrix reads eight vendors across fourteen rows, each cell sourced from the vendor's own docs.

Going deeper: the pricing page is the full rate card with the 429-not-overage policy printed on it, the free API comparison prices the $0 route against the same field, and the webcapture product page keeps engine, prices, and a curl quick start on one page.

More comparisons: Gotenberg vs Puppeteer, Gotenberg vs WeasyPrint, Gotenberg vs LibreOffice, Puppeteer vs wkhtmltopdf.

Method

Checked 2026-10-03 against pdfshift.io pricing and the OpenAPI spec, with our own numbers from the published rate card; the capability grid re-checked 2026-10-05 against both vendors' documented surfaces, and Boost overage re-checked 2026-10-24. Questions or corrections: hello@webcapture.io.