PDFShift
French HTML-to-PDF API running headless Chromium behind a single REST endpoint.
Jobs Convert
Since 2018
Operated by PDFShift SASU
Where your files are processed
Files leave your device
We observed a file upload to api.pdfshift.io.
The HTML source, or a URL for PDFShift to fetch, is POSTed to https://api.pdfshift.io/v3/convert/pdf and rendered on PDFShift's servers. PDFShift's own help centre is unusually explicit about retention: 'Once the request is done, there are no remaining traces of your data on our servers. All is done in memory.' The generated PDF 'is never stored on our server by default'. It is stored, on PDFShift's own S3, for two days if you pass the filename or webhook parameters, and the raw request is stored if you set log_request to true; setting is_gdpr or is_hipaa to true blocks that storage unless you also supply your own s3_destination. PDFShift's servers are managed by OVH in France.
What it does
PDFShift is a hosted conversion API that renders HTML to PDF with headless Chromium, and can also output PNG, JPEG and WEBP. It deliberately mimics a browser: modern CSS, injected stylesheets and JavaScript, webfonts, custom headers and footers with page numbering, and optional password protection or watermarks, all driven by one HTTP request per document through a documented REST interface. Billing is by credit rather than by document — one credit covers 5 MB of generated output, so a long image-heavy PDF costs several credits while a short text invoice costs one.
Best for: Product and back-office teams that need an HTML page or template rendered to PDF by a Chromium-based engine, at low to moderate volume, without running their own Chromium fleet.
Worth knowing: Your HTML, its inline data and any URL you ask it to fetch go to PDFShift's servers, so nothing here is suitable for content that cannot leave your infrastructure. Cost is metered by output size, not by document count, which makes spend unpredictable when documents vary — a 14 MB PDF consumes three credits, not one. The free tier caps at 50 credits and a 15 MB file with a 30-second timeout, and there is no uptime guarantee at all: PDFShift states in its own help centre that it will not guarantee any SLA level. Chromium-based rendering is not the same as what a browser shows: print styling, font availability, viewport size and load timing all change the output, and no fidelity comparison was run here. The pricing table also lists a no-file-size-limit feature, so which paid tier that covers and whether it applies to input or output needs checking before any universal maximum is quoted.
Details, and where each comes from
Vendor statements, our own reading of their pages, and the things nobody has established yet, each answered separately. Where we have not confirmed something it says so rather than guessing, and a row nobody has established is greyed out.
- Versions covered
- API
- Website
- pdfshift.io
- Requires an account
- Yes
- Free tier
- Yes
- Watermark on the free tier
- No
- Maximum file size
- 250 MB
- Batch processing
- Yes
- Data residency
- European Union
- Open source
- No
- Self-hostable
- No
- Licence
- Proprietary
- Redaction
- No redaction feature
- Programmatic access
- HTTP API
- Last availability check
- Responded in 113 ms 16 October 2026
Checked automatically by our own runner, not reported by the vendor. 100% of our last 30 checks got a response.
What the redaction verdict rests on
From the vendor's own documentation, read 22 September 2026. Not tested by us.
What that does not establish: The vendor’s own site was read on 22 September 2026 and contains no mention of redaction, sanitisation, blackout or whiteout. Absence from a vendor’s own material is not proof that a feature does not exist — it may be undocumented, or on a page the reading did not reach — but for a NEGATIVE claim it is the strongest evidence available, and it is weaker than a positive quote. Recorded as such rather than presented as certainty.
What the vendor says
Claims are labelled rather than repeated as fact. Where we have checked something ourselves, it says so and shows when. Checked means we read the vendor's own page and it says what we recorded — not that we tested the behaviour, unless the note says we did.
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“Once the request is done, there are no remaining traces of your data on our servers. All is done in memory.”
Checked by us — the source only partly supports this Read 22 September 2026
The sentence is verbatim on the page — "Once the request is done, there are no remaining traces of your data on our servers. All is done in memory." — but the same page goes on to name three documented ways to make it false, so partial is the honest verdict rather than confirmed. Under a heading reading "Special conditions", the page states that the parameters filename, webhook and log_request each cause the generated PDF to be written to PDFShift's S3 bucket and returned as a URL instead of held in memory: "In that case, we do store the document. If your documents requires no storage at all, you must not use these parameters." It adds that log_request stores the request body in raw, against a default in which logs hold only "a irreversible hash used for comparison purpose". So the claim is true of the default path and false of three options a customer may well be using, and the page offers no indication of which path a given account is on. Two mitigating facts, also from the page, belong with it: an s3_destination parameter keeps even the stored output out of PDFShift's bucket, and the is_gdpr and is_hipaa flags force the no-storage behaviour regardless of the other parameters. Recorded as a defect in the claim's unconditional wording rather than as misconduct — the vendor discloses all of this, in the same document, under a heading that invites the reader to look. We have not called the API and no control was run.
Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte
Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
- From
- the text a browser renders
- SHA-256
- 26184da475804da8079109109864e864566d5f5c2024d217bac6e3f94ea6b61e
How we checked: Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://help.pdfshift.io/how-do-you-handle-sensitive-documents re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-21. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-help-pdfshift-io-how-do-you-handle-sensitive-documents-0403a633.txt.
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“But despite all this, we can't, and we won't guarantee any level of SLA, being at 99.999%, 99.99% or event 99.9%, and the reason is simple;”
Checked by us — the source says this Read 22 September 2026
Confirmed verbatim, including the vendor's typo ("event 99.9%" for "even 99.9%"), which is preserved rather than corrected. This is the most refreshing claim in the tier: asked whether it guarantees an SLA, the vendor says plainly that it does not and will not, at any of the three levels named. Most vendors in this index assert a number; this one refuses to. It is the same vendor whose retention claim was recorded as partial earlier in this campaign for omitting three storage parameters, so the index holds both a candid refusal and an incomplete claim from the same company — which is why each is recorded on its own evidence.
Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte
Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
- From
- the text a browser renders
- SHA-256
- e8406fe4470dacf538e56464bdc5e3493828e5d362faae2a1ab43c68766961bc
How we checked: Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://help.pdfshift.io/what-is-your-sla-can-you-guarantee-a-999-a-9999 re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-21. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-help-pdfshift-io-what-is-your-sla-can-you-guarantee-a-999--2b39cad5.txt.
Each claim is quoted from the vendor's own pages. This section describes what we have and have not checked — it is not a judgement about anyone.
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