InkPDF vs API2PDF: an honest comparison

Pricing and features checked July 2026. Their pricing page is the source of truth.

API2PDF is the utilitarian workhorse of this market: pure pay-as-you-go pricing (~$0.005 per conversion), multiple engines (Chromium, wkhtmltopdf, LibreOffice), and a no-frills API. It's genuinely excellent at what it does. InkPDF plays a different game: it doesn't just convert documents you've built — it builds them, from JSON templates or Markdown, with predictable flat plans.

Pricing philosophy

Yes, we'll say it plainly: at low, spiky volumes API2PDF is cheaper. If you convert 200 documents a month and never touch templates, pay-as-you-go wins. The flat-plan advantage shows up in predictability (finance teams hate variable bills), in the quota hard-stop (an infinite-loop bug costs you $0 extra on InkPDF), and at steady volumes where $49 covers 10k documents with headroom.

What each does that the other doesn't

Switching is one field rename

API2PDF (Chrome engine) call:

POST https://v2.api2pdf.com/chrome/pdf/html
Authorization: YOUR-API-KEY
{ "html": "<h1>Hi</h1>" }

InkPDF call — the body field is even the same name:

POST https://inkpdf.dev/v1/pdf
Authorization: Bearer ink_live_…
{ "html": "<h1>Hi</h1>" }

Choose API2PDF if…

You need Office-document conversion or PDF merging, your volume is low and spiky, or you specifically need wkhtmltopdf output parity with a legacy system.

Choose InkPDF if…

Your documents are invoices, receipts, quotes, reports, or certificates you'd rather generate from JSON than hand-built HTML; you want a free tier to prototype on and a bill that's the same number every month.