PDFLoom vs DocRaptor: HTML to PDF API comparison
DocRaptor and PDFLoom both turn HTML into PDF through an API, but they use different rendering engines and sit at very different price points. Here's an honest comparison, including where DocRaptor is the better choice.
The short version
- Pick DocRaptor for print-first documents that need advanced paged-media CSS (footnotes, cross-references, running headers by chapter), accessible tagged PDFs, or book-like typography. Its Prince engine is built for that.
- Pick PDFLoom when you want the PDF to look like what Chrome shows (flexbox, grid, JavaScript charts, web fonts), at a much lower price per document.
Pricing
| Monthly volume | DocRaptor | PDFLoom |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 5 documents (test documents with a watermark are free) | 100 PDFs |
| ~1,000 | $75 (Premium, 1,250 docs) | $9 (Starter, 2,000) |
| ~5,000 | $149 (Max, 5,000 docs) | $29 (Pro, 10,000) |
| ~15,000 | $399 (Bronze, 15,000 docs) | $79 (Scale, 50,000) |
| 40,000+ | $1,000 (Silver, 40,000 docs), enterprise above | $79 up to 50,000; contact us above |
Prices and limits checked on 29 October 2026 from each vendor's public pricing page. Plans change; check their site before deciding. Something wrong or outdated? Tell us and we'll fix it.
Rendering engine
DocRaptor renders with Prince, a dedicated HTML-to-PDF engine with strong support for CSS Paged Media: page-based counters, footnotes, PDF bookmarks from headings, and fine typographic control. JavaScript support is more limited than a browser's.
PDFLoom renders with headless Chrome. The output matches what you see in Chrome's print preview, modern layout and JavaScript work the way they do in the browser, and anything you prototype in DevTools carries over. Chrome's paged-media support covers @page size and margins, page breaks, and header/footer templates with page numbers, but not Prince-level book features.
Features
| DocRaptor | PDFLoom | |
|---|---|---|
| HTML or URL to PDF | Yes | Yes |
| Engine | Prince | Headless Chrome |
| Invoices from JSON (no HTML needed) | No | Yes (invoice API) |
| MCP server for AI agents | Not that we know of | Yes (docs) |
| Document hosting | Yes (paid add-on) | No; PDFs are returned in the response and not stored |
| Track record | Established for many years | New service |
Switching from DocRaptor
If your templates don't depend on Prince-specific CSS (for example float: footnote or prince-* properties), they usually render the same in Chrome. The quickest check: open the HTML in Chrome, press print, and look at the preview. That's what PDFLoom will produce. A free key gives you 100 PDFs a month to compare.