| Category | Score | Cases | Pass | Close | Not yet |
|---|
{{ value }}, {% for %}, {% if %}, {% include "partial" %}. Use <img src="logo"> for the logo above.pdf-engine is a free, open-source (MIT) HTML to PDF generator written in Rust and compiled to WebAssembly. It turns an HTML template and your data into a real PDF with selectable vector text, entirely on the user's own device: no backend, no headless Chrome, no Puppeteer, nothing uploaded. The same engine runs in Node.js, Electron, Tauri and Docker, and can print receipts and labels (ESC/POS, ZPL).
rowspan and colspan), SVG, gradients, page numbers, headers and footers.@font-face fonts, password encryption.npm install @lands-horizon-corp/pdf-engine-wasmimport { PDFEngine } from '@lands-horizon-corp/pdf-engine-wasm';
const pdf = new PDFEngine();
await pdf.download({
template: '<h1>Invoice {{ no }}</h1>',
data: { no: '12345' },
}, 'invoice.pdf');No bundler? Import it from a CDN: https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@lands-horizon-corp/pdf-engine-wasm@1/index.js
| pdf-engine | dompdf.js | ironpress | html2pdf.js | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Receipt, in the browser | 1.3 ms | 2.8 ms | 39 ms | 86 ms |
| Text is real text | yes | yes | yes | no (a picture) |
| Download (compressed) | 3.3 MB | 0.17 MB | 4.7 MB | 0.26 MB |
| Math and Markdown built in | yes | no | yes | no |
| Receipt and label printing | yes | no | no | no |
Chromium on an Apple M4, median after warm-up. dompdf.js starts faster and downloads less; Puppeteer renders any web page, including JavaScript, which pdf-engine does not run. The full benchmark and its methods are in the repository.
No. The browser build runs entirely in the page with WebAssembly, so the document is never uploaded and it works offline. The same engine also runs natively in Node.js, Electron, Tauri and Docker when you want a server.
For documents built from HTML templates (invoices, receipts, reports, labels, certificates), yes: it needs no browser and makes a receipt in about a millisecond. It does not run JavaScript in the page and supports a subset of CSS (no float yet), so a page that depends on scripts or on every CSS feature still needs a real browser.
Yes. The same package runs under Node.js (documents can be made in worker threads), and a native Node and Electron package talks to the Rust engine over stdin and stdout and can print to receipt and label printers.
Real vector text that can be selected, searched and copied, in small files. Libraries that screenshot the page (html2pdf.js, jspdf-html2canvas) produce pictures of text.
Yes. Markdown with a filter, LaTeX formulas in math tags, and QR codes and barcodes as vector shapes, all built in, with no extra libraries to ship.
About 1.3 ms for a receipt and 3 ms for a 30-line invoice in the browser (Chromium on an Apple M4). Ten thousand receipts take about 13 seconds as WebAssembly and about 4 seconds natively. dompdf.js starts faster and downloads less (0.17 MB against 3.3 MB); pdf-engine makes each document two to two and a half times faster once running. The benchmark, with every library and its methods, is in the repository.
MIT. It is free for commercial use.