Comparison
A hosted alternative to Gotenberg
Gotenberg is an excellent open-source PDF service, and it is free. The cost shows up elsewhere: you run the Docker container, you allocate the RAM each Chromium instance needs, you handle health checks and scaling, and you eat a cold start on every deploy. For a lot of teams that operational tax is not worth it. PDFPipe is the same idea, hosted.
Self-hosted versus hosted
| PDFPipe | Self-hosted Gotenberg | |
|---|---|---|
| You run | Nothing | A Docker container, sized for Chromium |
| Scaling | Automatic | Your problem |
| Cold starts | None you see | On every deploy and scale-up |
| Cost | Flat per document, free below 500/mo | Free software, paid infrastructure and ops time |
| Security | SSRF-sandboxed by default | You configure it |
| AI agents | First-class MCP server | None |
When to keep Gotenberg
If you have the DevOps capacity, need full data sovereignty, or run very high volume where per-document pricing adds up, self-hosting wins. PDFPipe is the better trade when you would rather ship product than operate a rendering service, especially below the volume where running your own cluster pays off.
The request looks familiar
curl -X POST https://api.pdfpipe.xyz/v1/pdf \
-H "Authorization: Bearer pp_live_your_key" \
-d '{"html":"<h1>Report</h1>","options":{"format":"A4"}}' \
--output report.pdfTry it on the live playground with no signup.
See pricing →