TechTrends Now - Tech News for Builders and Operators

I got tired of running headless Chrome myself just to turn HTML invoices into PDF attachments. So I built a small API and listed it on RapidAPI: Simple PDF API.

Free tier included. No browser setup on your side.

The problem

Every SaaS eventually needs PDFs:

Invoices and receipts
Reports and exports
Downloadable confirmations

The usual options:

Run Puppeteer/Playwright yourself — works, but ops pain (memory, crashes, scaling)
Enterprise PDF APIs — great, but $15–75/mo before you have revenue
wkhtmltopdf — dated CSS support

I wanted: JSON in → PDF bytes out. One POST. Done.

The solution

curl --request POST \
  --url "https://simple-pdf-api.p.rapidapi.com/v1/html-to-pdf" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --header "X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  --header "X-RapidAPI-Host: simple-pdf-api.p.rapidapi.com" \
  --data '{
    "html": "<html><body><h1>Invoice #1042</h1><p>Total: $99.00</p></body></html>",
    "page_size": "A4"
  }' \
  --output invoice.pdf

That's it. You get raw application/pdf bytes back.

JavaScript example

const res = await fetch("https://simple-pdf-api.p.rapidapi.com/v1/html-to-pdf", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    "X-RapidAPI-Key": process.env.RAPIDAPI_KEY,
    "X-RapidAPI-Host": "simple-pdf-api.p.rapidapi.com",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    html: invoiceHtml,
    page_size: "A4",
  }),
});

const pdf = Buffer.from(await res.arrayBuffer());
// attach to email, upload to S3, etc.

Python example

import requests

resp = requests.post(
    "https://simple-pdf-api.p.rapidapi.com/v1/html-to-pdf",
    headers={
        "X-RapidAPI-Key": "YOUR_KEY",
        "X-RapidAPI-Host": "simple-pdf-api.p.rapidapi.com",
    },
    json={"html": invoice_html, "page_size": "A4"},
    timeout=90,
)
resp.raise_for_status()

with open("invoice.pdf", "wb") as f:
    f.write(resp.content)

What else is included

Same API key, same subscription:

HTML or URL → PDF — full CSS via headless Chromium
Merge PDFs — combine multiple documents
Split PDF — extract page ranges
Watermark — add CONFIDENTIAL / DRAFT overlays
Compress — reduce file size by removing duplicate objects
Protect — AES password-encrypt with configurable print permissions
Rotate — rotate all or selected pages by 90, 180, or 270°
Extract text — pull plain text for search/indexing

8 endpoints, one API key.

Pricing

Plan	Price	Quota
BASIC	Free	~50 req/day
PRO	$9/mo	5,000 req/mo
ULTRA	$29/mo	25,000 req/mo

Enough free tier to test. PRO is priced for indie devs and early-stage SaaS.

Try it

Subscribe on RapidAPI (free plan)
Copy your API key
Paste the curl above
Open invoice.pdf

Interactive API docs: https://pdf-api-production-9570.up.railway.app/docs

Built with FastAPI + Playwright. Happy to answer integration questions in the comments.

Generate Invoice PDFs from HTML in 10 Lines of Code

The problem

The solution

JavaScript example

Python example

What else is included

Pricing

Try it

Comments (0)

United States

Related News

Why Every Developer Needs a Strong Test Suite (Even If You Hate Writing Tests)

SOLSTICE SIDEBAR - AI INCIDENT DESK

Passkeys in 2026: A Practical Engineering Guide to Passwordless Auth

The CFO's AI Playbook: 5 Finance Automations Every Indian Business Should Run in 2026

AWS S3 Basics for Beginners