Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?

Puppeteer and Playwright are the main open-source options nowadays, both solid for HTML → PDF once your print CSS is sorted. Don’t forget proper page breaks (break-before/after/inside) — e.g. break-after: page works in Chromium, while always doesn’t. For trickier pagination you can look at Paged.js, and I’d test layouts in Chrome/Edge before automating.

Shameless plug: I run yakpdf.com, a hosted Puppeteer-based service if you want to avoid self-hosting. https://rapidapi.com/yakpdf-yakpdf/api/yakpdf

Re: Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?

#6

Post by mightjustwork » Sun, Sep 28, 2025, 7:04 PM UTC

https://gotenberg.dev/ ...has been working well for me for the last few years. It's a headless instance of Google Chrome with a golang wrapper. Runs well in Docker or a cloud instance.

Re: Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?

#7

Post by pabs3 » Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 9:35 AM UTC

Just print to PDF in a browser, or automate that using a browser automation tool. For a non-browser-based open source solution, WeasyPrint.

https://weasyprint.org/

For a proprietary solution, try Prince XML:

https://www.princexml.com/

Re: Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?

#8

Post by brudgers » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 6:03 PM UTC

hhthrowaway1230 wrote: post #3

zja wrote: post #2

pandoc

doesn't pandoc rely on some engine itself?

Curious why that matters to you?

I mean everything has dependencies (some of the solutions elsewhere require Chrome and other common solutions require the JVM). At least Pandoc is GPL.

Re: Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?

#9

Post by cpach » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 6:54 PM UTC

hhthrowaway1230 wrote: post #3

zja wrote: post #2

pandoc

doesn't pandoc rely on some engine itself?

Yep, you need something like XeTeX in order to render the PDF.

Re: Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?

#10

Post by journal » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 2:52 AM UTC

if you are doing html to pdf, you might also need the ability to merge. a few more features and you're better of with a commercial solution.