I Built a PDF API That Doesn't Use Chrome

Most PDF generation APIs spin up a headless browser (Puppeteer, Playwright) to render HTML into a PDF. It works, but it's slow, expensive, and unpredictable.

So I built DocForge – a PDF generation API that uses PDFKit directly for deterministic, fast output.

How It Works

POST /api/generate
{
  "template": "invoice",
  "data": {
    "invoice_number": "INV-001",
    "from": { "name": "Acme Corp" },
    "to": { "name": "Client Corp" },
    "items": [...],
    "total": 49.99
  }
}
→ Returns a PDF in ~3 seconds

Why Not Chrome?

5 Templates Available Now

• Invoice – Professional billing with line items
• Receipt – Payment confirmation
• Certificate – Achievement/completion certificates
• Report – Data-driven reports
• Contract – Legal document templates

Free to Try

DocForge is currently free to try. Just grab an API key and start generating PDFs.

👉 Try DocForge

What's Next?

I'm adding more templates based on developer feedback. What PDF templates do you need most? Drop a comment below!

Built with PDFKit + Vercel Serverless Functions. No Chrome harmed in the making of these PDFs.