What is PDFBase?
PDFBase is a unified PDF API that handles the entire PDF lifecycle: generation from HTML or templates, editing (merge, split, watermark, compress), extraction (text, tables, OCR), and format conversion — all through a single, consistent API.Quickstart
Generate your first PDF in under 2 minutes
API Reference
Full endpoint documentation with examples
Templates
Build reusable, data-driven PDF templates
CLI
Generate and manage PDFs from your terminal
Why PDFBase?
You can build PDF generation yourself. Puppeteer + 2 hours = working prototype. Then you’ll spend 2 months making it production-grade: browser pooling, font loading, timeout handling, concurrent request management, storage, retries. We did that part already. $50/mo.The self-hosting tax
Who it’s for
Core capabilities
Generate (Phase 1)
Create PDFs from HTML, URLs, or stored templates with full Chromium rendering. Supports JavaScript execution, web fonts, CSS Grid/Flexbox, and everything a modern browser renders.Edit (Phase 2)
Merge multiple PDFs, split pages, add text or image watermarks, and compress file sizes. All operations return a new PDF — originals are never mutated.Extract (Phase 3)
Pull text content, structured table data, and OCR scanned documents. AI-powered structured extraction turns invoices and receipts into clean JSON.Convert (Phase 2)
Office documents (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX) to PDF. PDF to PNG/JPEG for thumbnails and previews.Design principles
- One API call = one credit. No fractional credits, no per-page charges, no failed-request billing.
- Stripe-quality DX. Prefixed IDs, option objects, idempotency keys, typed errors, webhook HMAC signing.
- Debug-first. Every generation can return a screenshot, console output, and failed resource list alongside the PDF.
- Agent-native. MCP server, structured errors, and deterministic outputs make PDFBase a first-class tool for AI agents.