HTML to PDF in Node.js, without Puppeteer

One fetch call

No SDK, no Chromium download. Send HTML, get a PDF buffer back, write it to disk or stream it to your user. Node 18 and newer have fetch built in; on older versions use undici or axios.

import fs from "node:fs/promises";

const res = await fetch("https://api.pdfkitt.dev/v1/convert", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Authorization": "Bearer " + process.env.PDFKITT_API_KEY,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    html: "<h1>Invoice</h1>",
    options: { page_size: "A4" },
  }),
});

const pdf = Buffer.from(await res.arrayBuffer());
await fs.writeFile("invoice.pdf", pdf);

Stream the PDF to an Express response

Most apps do not want the file on disk; they want to hand it to the browser. Pipe the upstream body straight into the response so a large report never sits fully in memory. The same pattern works in Fastify, Koa, and Next.js route handlers.

import express from "express";
import { Readable } from "node:stream";

const app = express();

app.get("/invoices/:id.pdf", async (req, res) => {
  // Render with whatever you already use: EJS, Handlebars, React's
  // renderToStaticMarkup, or a plain template string.
  const html = await renderInvoiceHtml(req.params.id);

  const upstream = await fetch("https://api.pdfkitt.dev/v1/convert", {
    method: "POST",
    headers: {
      "Authorization": "Bearer " + process.env.PDFKITT_API_KEY,
      "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    body: JSON.stringify({ html, options: { page_size: "A4" } }),
  });

  if (!upstream.ok) {
    const { error } = await upstream.json();
    return res.status(502).json({ message: error.message, request_id: error.request_id });
  }

  res.setHeader("Content-Type", "application/pdf");
  res.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "inline; filename=invoice-" + req.params.id + ".pdf");
  Readable.fromWeb(upstream.body).pipe(res);
});

Swap inline for attachment in the Content-Disposition header to force a download instead of opening the PDF in a tab.

Page size, margins, and orientation

Everything about the page is set in the options object. Page size accepts A4, Letter, or Legal; margins take any CSS length; landscape and print_background are booleans. Anything you do not set falls back to A4, portrait, with backgrounds printed. For headers, footers, and page breaks, use print CSS in your HTML: @page rules and break-inside: avoid behave exactly as they do in Chrome's print preview.

{
  "html": "<h1>Quarterly report</h1>",
  "options": {
    "page_size": "Letter",
    "landscape": true,
    "print_background": true,
    "margins": { "top": "20mm", "right": "15mm", "bottom": "20mm", "left": "15mm" }
  }
}

Render a URL, with or without JavaScript

If the page already exists, send a url instead of html and pdfkitt fetches and renders it. JavaScript is off by default; turn it on per request when the page draws its content client-side. URL fetches are blocked from reaching private, loopback, and cloud-metadata addresses, so the renderer cannot be pointed at your internal network.

const res = await fetch("https://api.pdfkitt.dev/v1/convert", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Authorization": "Bearer " + process.env.PDFKITT_API_KEY,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    url: "https://example.com/reports/2026-q3",
    javascript: true,
  }),
});

Handling errors and timeouts

A successful render returns status 200 with an application/pdf body. Anything else returns a JSON body with an error object containing a stable code, a human-readable message, and a request_id you can quote to support. Check res.ok before touching the body, log the request ID, and treat quota and rate-limit responses as retryable after a delay. Renders are capped at 30 seconds, so give your own HTTP client a timeout a little above that. The full list of error codes is in the API docs.

When local Puppeteer still makes sense

If you need full browser automation — interactive sessions, screenshots in many formats, or an on-prem environment where outbound API calls are not allowed — running Puppeteer or Playwright yourself is the right call. For plain HTML to PDF in a normal or serverless backend, an API removes the Chromium dependency and the cold-start pain. See how the trade-off plays out on the pdfkitt vs Puppeteer page, or jump straight to the API docs.

FAQ