Alternatives · Prince

From wkhtmltopdf to Prince: what changes

Prince, by YesLogic, is a commercial HTML-to-PDF converter with an engine of its own, made for print; DocRaptor and EuroPDF sell it as a hosted API. wkhtmltopdf’s status page suggests it, with WeasyPrint, for reports from HTML you control. pdfkiln keeps wkhtmltopdf’s command line instead, and renders with Chromium.

What changes when you leave wkhtmltopdf for Prince

• Another engine. Prince lays out the page itself: templates tuned for wkhtmltopdf’s WebKit render differently, and are to be checked one by one.
• JavaScript is off by default. Once turned on, Prince supports most of ES5 and part of ES6, runs scripts before the layout, then once after it, to read it; document.write and setInterval are not supported.
• Headers and footers come from CSS paged media, not from --header-html pages.
• A command line with options of its own, and wrappers for Java, .NET, PHP, Python and Node.js. The wkhtmltopdf libraries do not call it.
• PDF profiles. PDF/A-1 to PDF/A-3, PDF/UA-1, PDF/X, and attachments with their relationship, which its documentation names for Factur-X and ZUGFeRD invoices.
• Licenses per desktop, per server, or per site on quote.

When Prince is the right choice

Paged media and typography first, books and long reports, PDF/UA, a commercial product with its support.

When pdfkiln is

wkhtmltopdf’s templates and integrations kept as they are, JavaScript as a browser runs it, a free core under MIT. PDF/A-3 and Factur-X from these same templates are what pdfkiln Pro is being built for.