By the Easy PDF Server Team
wkhtmltopdf has been a popular open-source tool for converting HTML to PDF for over a decade. Built on the Qt WebKit rendering engine, it served developers well when alternatives were scarce. But Qt WebKit is now outdated — it lacks support for modern CSS features like flexbox, CSS Grid, and custom properties. It also has known rendering bugs with webfonts and complex layouts.
If you are still using wkhtmltopdf, you have likely encountered one of these problems:
Here are five alternatives that solve these problems and bring HTML to PDF conversion into the modern era.
Easy PDF Server is a hosted REST API built on a modern Chromium rendering engine. You send an HTML string or a URL, and receive a PDF in response. Because it uses Chromium (the same engine powering Google Chrome), your PDFs render exactly as they do in the browser — flexbox, grid, custom fonts, and all.
Best for: Teams that want zero infrastructure overhead and consistent, modern rendering.
Puppeteer is Google's Node.js library for controlling headless Chrome. It provides the most accurate HTML to PDF rendering available since it uses the actual Chrome browser engine. However, it requires installing and managing Chromium on your server, and each PDF conversion spawns a browser process that consumes significant memory.
Best for: Node.js developers who need pixel-perfect rendering and are comfortable managing browser infrastructure.
PrinceXML is a commercial HTML to PDF converter known for its excellent support of print-specific CSS features like page breaks, running headers and footers, and CSS Paged Media. It is widely used in publishing and academic document generation.
Best for: Publishing and print-focused document generation with advanced paged media requirements.
DocRaptor is a SaaS PDF API built on PrinceXML. It offers the Prince rendering engine as a cloud service, eliminating the need to install and manage Prince on your own infrastructure. It supports both HTML to PDF and HTML to Excel/CSV conversion.
Best for: Teams that want PrinceXML rendering quality without managing their own Prince license.
WeasyPrint is an open-source Python library that converts HTML to PDF using its own rendering engine (not a full browser). It is lighter than Puppeteer and supports a reasonable subset of CSS. It is popular in the Python ecosystem and works well for documents that do not require complex CSS layouts.
Best for: Python developers who need a lightweight, open-source solution for simpler documents.
If you need the most accurate HTML to PDF rendering with zero server management, a hosted API like Easy PDF Server gives you modern Chromium-based rendering without the operational burden. For teams that must run everything in-house, Puppeteer offers the best rendering fidelity at the cost of infrastructure management. PrinceXML and WeasyPrint serve the publishing and Python niches respectively, while DocRaptor brings PrinceXML to the cloud.
Ready to move on from wkhtmltopdf? Start with Easy PDF Server at $20/month and get your API key today.
Compare all features side by side on our hosted vs self-hosted comparison page.