PDFik is an asynchronous PDF generation API for developers and engineering teams. Send a public URL or raw HTML, receive a job ID, and get an HMAC-signed webhook the moment the PDF is ready — polling endpoints exist for environments that cannot receive callbacks. Rendering runs on sandboxed headless Chromium, so modern CSS, web fonts and JavaScript-heavy pages come out pixel-accurate.
Who it is for
Software and SaaS teams that generate documents from their own applications — invoices, receipts, statements, reports, tickets — at any volume, and teams replacing self-hosted wkhtmltopdf or Puppeteer/Chromium rendering with a managed API. Typical users are developers, CTOs and technical founders at startups through enterprise engineering teams.
How it works
1. POST a job with a URL or HTML (plus optional page size, margins, headers/footers, wait conditions).
2. Receive a job ID immediately; rendering runs asynchronously on a queue with autoscaled workers.
3. Get an HMAC-signed webhook when the job finishes, or poll the job status endpoint.
4. Download the PDF from a controlled link; generated documents are guaranteed deleted within 24 hours.
Key capabilities
- URL and HTML rendering on sandboxed Chromium (Playwright), one isolated browser context per job.
- Signed webhooks on every plan, including Free: HMAC signatures, automatic retries with backoff, and a dead-letter queue — a lost callback surfaces on PDFik's side instead of failing silently on yours.
- Free test mode: pass "test": true to exercise the full pipeline (statuses, webhooks, signatures, downloads) without spending quota.
- Files up to 150 MB on every plan, including Free.
- Authenticated rendering (basic/bearer credentials for URLs behind auth) on Pro and above; credentials are attached only to same-origin requests and encrypted end to end while queued.
- Two published billing meters per plan — rendered PDFs and generated gigabytes, counted separately; downloads never debit quota; every limit is on the pricing page.
- Privacy by default: 24-hour guaranteed deletion of generated documents; per-job credentials AES-256-GCM encrypted.
- Security: Chromium sandbox enabled, SSRF protection (private networks, cloud metadata, file:// blocked at request and render time), API keys hashed at rest with optional IP allowlists, TLS everywhere, optional two-factor authentication on the dashboard, RFC 7807 error responses with stable error codes.
- Developer experience: official typed SDKs for JavaScript/TypeScript, Python and Java; public OpenAPI specification; copy-paste curl quickstarts; a no-account sandbox on the homepage that performs a real render; public status page with live probes.
- Dashboard: API key lifecycle, usage by both meters, job history, webhook settings and delivery log, billing via Stripe.
Plans
Free: 100 PDFs and 0.5 GB per month — card verified, never charged. Starter $29/mo (5,000 PDFs / 10 GB), Pro $99/mo (50,000 / 50 GB), Business $449/mo (500,000 / 300 GB, volume add-on $0.55/GB). About 20% off on annual billing; 99.5% SLA on all paid tiers. Plans can be changed or cancelled anytime.
Support
Email help desk, in-dashboard chat, full documentation at docs.pdfik.net (quickstarts, error-code references), and a public status page.
PDFik is founder-built and bootstrapped, headquartered in Kraków, Poland.
Who Is the Company Behind PDFik?