HTML to PDF API: The Complete Guide for Developers

Converting HTML to PDF is one of those tasks that sounds simple until you actually try it. You spin up Puppeteer, wrestle with headless Chrome flags, debug font rendering issues, and an hour later you're questioning your career choices.

There's a better way: use a dedicated HTML to PDF API. Send your HTML in, get a PDF back. No browser infrastructure to maintain.

Why use an API instead of self-hosting?

• No infrastructure — headless Chrome eats RAM. A single instance uses 200-500 MB. Scale that to concurrent requests and you're running a browser farm.
• No dependency hell — Puppeteer/Playwright versions, Chromium binaries, system fonts, missing libs on Alpine Linux... an API removes all of this.
• Consistent output — same rendering engine, same fonts, same result every time. No "works on my machine" for PDFs.

How it works with Screenshot API

One POST request. That's it.

curl -X POST https://screenshotapis.org/v1/pdf \
  -H "X-Api-Key: sk_live_your_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"html": "<h1>Invoice #42</h1><p>Amount: $99</p>", "format": "A4"}'\
  --output invoice.pdf

You can also render a live URL:

curl -X POST https://screenshotapis.org/v1/pdf \
  -H "X-Api-Key: sk_live_your_key" \
  -d '{"url": "https://your-app.com/invoice/42", "format": "A4"}' \
  --output invoice.pdf

Supported options

• Page formats — A4, Letter, Legal, A3, Tabloid
• Orientation — portrait or landscape
• Margins — custom top, right, bottom, left margins
• Headers & footers — inject HTML headers and footers with page numbers
• Print background — include CSS backgrounds and colors

Common use cases

PDF invoices

Render your invoice HTML template server-side, POST it to the API, attach the PDF to an email. No browser needed on your server.

Report generation

Build a dashboard page with charts and tables, render it to PDF for weekly email digests. Works with any charting library that renders in a browser.

Contracts and documents

Generate branded documents from HTML templates. Consistent rendering across all platforms.