Picking a Node.js PDF generation library isn't straightforward. There are browser-based tools that convert HTML to PDF, programmatic builders that create documents from scratch, and cloud APIs that handle everything remotely. This guide compares the five most downloaded libraries with actual npm numbers and working code examples.
Generating invoice PDFs is a common requirement for web applications – whether for e-commerce, SaaS billing, or financial reporting. Puppeteer, a powerful headless browser automation tool for Node.js, makes it easy to convert HTML into high-quality PDFs. In this guide, we’ll walk you through setting up Puppeteer, designing an invoice with HTML and CSS, and generating a professional PDF.
PDF generation is a core requirement for many web applications – invoices, reports, contracts, certificates. Over the years, various HTML to PDF tools have taken different approaches to the problem. In this post, we look at the evolution of PDF generation solutions – from wkhtmltopdf and PrinceXML (via DocRaptor) to Puppeteer and Playwright – and then walk through a tutorial on using Playwright (Node.js) to generate a sample invoice PDF.