RenderPDFs vs PDFShift
A reliable PDF API — but you're paying enterprise rates for a developer tool.
Pricing
Prices as publicly listed at time of writing. Verify on each vendor's pricing page.
Features
| Feature | RenderPDFs | PDFShift |
|---|---|---|
| HTML → PDF | ✓ | ✓ |
| URL → PDF | ✓ | ✓ |
| Markdown → PDF | ✓ | ✗ |
| Image → PDF | ✓ | ✗ |
| Built-in templates (invoice, contract…) | ✓ | ✗ |
| PDF merge | ✓ | ✗ |
| MCP server (Claude, Cursor, Windsurf) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Official Node.js SDK | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free plan — no credit card | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cloud file storage (store: true) | ✓ | ✓ |
Verdict
PDFShift is a solid API with good documentation. But at $29/mo for only 500 PDFs, you're paying 3× more for 10× fewer conversions than RenderPDFs' Starter plan. And you get none of the extras — no Markdown, no templates, no MCP server.
Migrating from PDFShift?
Migration is a one-liner: swap the endpoint to `api.renderpdfs.com/v1/generate` and rename the auth header to `X-API-Key`. Your existing HTML payloads work as-is.
Common questions
Is RenderPDFs as reliable as PDFShift?▾
Both use Chromium for HTML rendering. RenderPDFs runs on Railway with 99.9% uptime on Business plans, and Sentry monitoring on every request.
Does PDFShift have built-in templates?▾
No. PDFShift only accepts raw HTML or a URL. RenderPDFs ships 6 ready-made templates (invoice, receipt, report, contract, certificate, offer letter) — pass JSON, get a PDF.
What is the MCP server?▾
It's a Model Context Protocol endpoint so AI assistants like Claude and Cursor can generate PDFs from natural language — no code required. PDFShift has no equivalent.
Other comparisons
Try RenderPDFs free
100 PDFs/month, no credit card required. Your first PDF in under 60 seconds.