What should I use for a REST API to create PDFs?

For a REST API that needs to generate PDFs, the best choice depends on what kind of PDFs you’re creating:

Good options

1. Headless Chrome / Playwright / Puppeteer

Best if your PDF is based on HTML/CSS templates.

• Use when: invoices, reports, receipts, web pages
• Pros: very accurate rendering, easy if you already have HTML templates
• Cons: can be heavier/slower than native libraries

Typical flow:
POST /pdf → send HTML or template data → server renders via Chrome → returns PDF

2. PDF libraries

Best if you want to generate PDFs programmatically without HTML.

Examples:

• Node.js: pdfkit, jspdf

• Python: ReportLab

• Java: iText / OpenPDF

• Go: gofpdf

• Use when: structured documents, forms, labels, simple reports

• Pros: more control, lighter than browser rendering

• Cons: more work to lay things out

3. Template + rendering service

Best for production systems that need consistent, scalable PDF generation.

• Use an HTML template engine (Handlebars, Jinja2, etc.)
• Render with headless Chrome or a dedicated service
• Queue jobs if PDFs are generated asynchronously

If you’re asking what to choose

• Most cases: HTML + headless Chrome/Playwright
• Need precise programmatic layout: PDF library
• Need scale/reliability: template service + queue + storage

A practical REST design

• POST /documents → create PDF job
• GET /documents/{id} → check status
• GET /documents/{id}/download → download PDF

If you want, I can recommend the best library/service for your stack (Node, Python, Java, .NET, Go) and the type of PDFs you need.