Comparison

A Node.js alternative to html-pdf-node

html-pdf-node is a thin wrapper around Puppeteer that launches a headless Chromium process for every render request. Installing it pulls in a 150 MB Chromium binary that breaks in Alpine-based Docker images, requires additional system packages on Debian, and spawns a new OS process every time you generate a PDF. PDFPipe moves the rendering off your server entirely: one HTTP call, no binary, no process management.

Side by side

The serverless problem

html-pdf-node and Puppeteer cannot run in AWS Lambda, Vercel Functions, Cloudflare Workers, or any Edge environment because they require a real OS process and filesystem. Teams that start with html-pdf-node on a traditional server eventually hit this wall when they try to move to serverless infrastructure. PDFPipe is an HTTP call and works everywhere fetch works.

Migration

// Before: html-pdf-node (Chromium binary required)
const htmlPdf = require("html-pdf-node");

const file = { content: "<h1>Invoice</h1>" };
const options = { format: "A4" };
const buffer = await htmlPdf.generatePdf(file, options);
// 150 MB Chromium process per render, no connection pooling

// After: one fetch call, no binary
const res = await fetch("https://api.pdfpipe.xyz/v1/pdf", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.PDFPIPE_API_KEY}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    html: "<h1>Invoice</h1>",
    options: { format: "A4" },
  }),
});
const buffer = await res.arrayBuffer();