HTML to PDF API — 1,000 free PDFs/month, no credit card

Abdul Jabeer Shaik — Wed, 13 May 2026 11:59:11 +0000

I built pdfkitt after getting frustrated with PDF APIs that
make you enter a credit card before you can test anything.

The idea was simple: give developers a genuinely useful free
tier (1,000 PDFs/month) so you can integrate and ship before
ever thinking about paying.

POST your HTML → get back a PDF. Powered by Playwright so
CSS, tables, and print layouts render accurately. Works best
for invoices, reports, and statements.

Built solo in 6 weeks. Would love your feedback!

pdfkitt — HTML to PDF API for Developers

Skip the Puppeteer setup. Convert HTML to PDF via a single POST request. 1,000 free PDFs/month, no credit card required.

pdfkitt.dev

I built an HTML-to-PDF API in 6 weeks — here's what I learned

Abdul Jabeer Shaik — Tue, 12 May 2026 01:48:05 +0000

I got frustrated with PDF APIs that make you enter a credit card
before you can test anything. So I built my own.

It's called pdfkitt.dev — POST your HTML, get back a PDF.
1,000 free PDFs/month, no credit card required.

How it works

curl -X POST https://api.pdfkitt.dev/v1/pdf \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer pdfk_live_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"html": "<h1>Hello</h1>"}' \
  --output result.pdf

That's it. No SDK required.

Tech decisions worth sharing

Playwright over Puppeteer — more stable browser pool
management, better CSS support for print layouts.

JavaScript disabled by design — security tradeoff. Works
perfectly for server-rendered HTML like invoices, reports, and
bank statements. Notion-style JS-heavy pages don't work —
and that's documented upfront.

Raw SQL over an ORM — kept it simple. Postgres on Railway,
bcrypt-hashed API keys, that's it.

Fastify over Express — faster, TypeScript-first, schema
validation built in.

The free tier decision

1,000 PDFs/month free was a deliberate choice. Most PDF APIs
give you 50-100 to "test" which isn't enough to actually
integrate and ship. I wanted developers to be able to go
from zero to production without ever thinking about paying.

What's working so far

Invoices, reports, bank statements render accurately
PowerShell integration works (had to document JSON handling explicitly — Windows devs have different defaults)
CSS print layouts, tables, page breaks all handled

What I cut from v1

SDKs, URL conversion, templates, webhooks, custom fonts,
screenshots, merge/split, OCR. All of it. Shipping one thing
well beats shipping ten things poorly.

Live at https://www.pdfkitt.dev — would love feedback from
anyone who's dealt with PDF generation pain.

Forem: Abdul Jabeer Shaik