pdfdots as a PDFgen alternative

pdfdots vs PDFgen at a glance

A generator and a toolbox solve different problems

The most useful thing to understand before switching is that PDFgen and pdfdots start at opposite ends of a document's life. PDFgen creates the PDF: it takes a prompt, a block of HTML or a template plus JSON data and returns a finished file. Its strengths are layout, repetition and automation. If your app needs to send 2,000 personalised certificates after a course ends, PDFgen is designed for exactly that.

pdfdots works on the PDF once it exists. You can merge it with a cover letter, take pages out, compress it, convert it to Word or Excel, run OCR on a scan, redact a line, fill in a form, add page numbers, protect it with a password, sign it, or send it to two people who must sign in order. We also make PDFs, from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, images and web pages, but we do not design documents from a prompt and we have no API.

Many people need a bit of both. Our honest suggestion: if you generate documents from code, keep a generator such as PDFgen for that step, and use pdfdots for the manual work that follows. If you only make the occasional invoice or turn a page into a PDF a few times a month, you probably do not need a generator at all.

When PDFgen is the better choice

We would point you to PDFgen ourselves in these cases:

• You generate PDFs from your own software. PDFgen has a REST API with template IDs, Handlebars fields, loops and conditionals, and guides for Node, Next.js, React, Python, Django, Rails, Laravel, PHP and Go. We have no public API.
• You want an AI to design a document from a sentence and then edit it by clicking the text. We have nothing like that.
• You work in Markdown. PDFgen converts pasted Markdown to PDF; we do not.
• You need volume: their Business plan includes 20,000 credits a month, team members and delivery to your own S3 bucket.
• You automate with Zapier, Make, n8n or Airtable, or you want an AI agent to create PDFs through their MCP server.
• You need A3, A5, Legal or Tabloid output, which their API lists. Our HTML to PDF offers A4 and Letter.

Doing your usual PDFgen jobs in pdfdots

Turning a web page into a PDF is the most common overlap. In our HTML to PDF tool you paste the address of a public page or upload an .html file, choose A4 or Letter and the orientation, and download the result. A real Chromium browser renders it on our server in Nuremberg, Germany, so modern CSS, web fonts and print styles work, and the file is deleted as soon as the PDF is returned. If your HTML lives only in an editor, save it as an .html file first. There is no watermark, even on the free plan.

For everyday business documents, our template library covers the ones small teams use most: invoice, receipt, price quote, expense report, NDA, service agreement, rental agreement, bill of sale, resume, timesheet, leave request and meeting minutes. Each one is a real fillable PDF. You fill it in your browser, so what you type is not uploaded while you work, then sign it with Sign PDF, add a password with Protect PDF or shrink it with Compress PDF. It takes a few minutes per document, which is fine for ten invoices a month and the wrong tool for ten thousand.

If you used PDFgen to make a contract or an NDA and now need it signed, that is where pdfdots adds the most. In Studio you upload the PDF, place signature, date and text fields, add the signers in order and send. Each person gets an e-mail with a private link, reminders go out automatically, and when everyone has signed you get the PDF with an audit trail and a certificate page. It is a simple electronic signature, not a qualified one. The free plan includes 3 sign requests a month.

Privacy: where your content goes

PDFgen's privacy policy says it is based in the United States and processes data there and wherever its service providers operate. It also says that prompts and related inputs are sent to third-party AI model providers for inference, and that it does not sell your content or use it to train its own models. It does not give a retention period for generated PDFs; information is kept while your account is active or as needed to provide the service.

With pdfdots, most tools never upload your file: merging, splitting, compressing, editing, signing, OCR and protecting all run inside your browser tab. HTML to PDF and the Office conversions use our server at Hetzner in Nuremberg, and the files are deleted as soon as the result is sent back. We use no AI provider on your documents. If you save something to My files, it is encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM in Germany and also available in the PDF Dots app for iPhone and Android.

What each one costs in practice

PDFgen's free plan gives 30 credits a month with a watermark and up to 5 templates. Personal costs $9 a month for 300 credits without the watermark, but it is web-only. The API starts with Starter at $29 a month for 1,000 credits, plus $9 for each extra user, and Business is $199 a month for 20,000 credits. One credit covers up to 5 pages, and only successful generations are charged. They list monthly prices only.

pdfdots counts tasks instead of pages. The free plan gives 3 tasks a day with files up to 10 MB and no watermark. Bronze is $2.99 a month or $23.99 a year for 20 tasks a day and 25 MB files. Silver ($5.99 a month) and Gold ($11.99 a month) remove the daily cap and raise the file limit to 100 MB and 250 MB. Server conversions such as HTML to PDF are capped at 50 MB on every plan, so Silver and Gold get 50 MB there and Bronze its usual 25 MB. For someone who makes a few documents a week and also needs to sign, merge or compress them, that usually costs less than a generator plan.

Tools to try instead

Frequently asked questions