Compare the Top PDF APIs as of April 2025

What are PDF APIs?

PDF APIs are software interfaces that enable developers to integrate PDF-related functionality into their applications or websites. These APIs allow for the creation, manipulation, conversion, and extraction of content from PDF files without requiring users to manually open or edit the files. Common features of PDF APIs include merging, splitting, editing text, adding annotations, and extracting text and images. They can also handle PDF conversions, such as converting PDFs to other formats like Word, Excel, or HTML, and vice versa. By using PDF APIs, businesses can automate document workflows, enhance document management systems, and integrate PDF capabilities into custom applications seamlessly. Compare and read user reviews of the best PDF APIs currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

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    Pdftools

    Pdftools

    PDF Tools

    Whether you have thousands of documents or millions, Pdftools has the products and services to help make processing a breeze. Designed for document-heavy industries, Pdftools’ suite of SDKs and APIs are here to make your document workflows easier, faster, and stress-free. Built on SDKs and APIs, the Pdftools products integrate seamlessly into your existing (or new) systems and applications. Process thousands of documents every minute. Our tools are precision-engineered to be efficient and run at blazing speeds. We’re engineers at heart, so we’re only satisfied with the most reliable, orderly, and usable, and well-documented platforms. Shrink file sizes down, but keep the quality and interactivity. Your documents will always be compliant for long-term archiving. We’ve obsessed over every detail in our products, and documented everything so it’s easy to get started.
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    Starting Price: $0/month/user
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  • 2
    pdfRest

    pdfRest

    Datalogics Inc.

    pdfRest API Toolkit was made by developers, for developers. Rapidly integrate PDF workflows with any business application, simply and seamlessly. pdfRest API Toolkit includes all of the PDF processing tools you'll need, to make your job easy. PDF to Word, PDF to Excel, PDF to PowerPoint, Add to PDF, Query PDF, Extract Text, Convert to PDF, PDF to Images, Convert to PDF/A, Convert to PDF/X, Compress PDF, Linearize PDF, Flatten Forms, Flatten Transparencies, Flatten Annotations, Flatten Layers, Merge PDFs, Split PDF, Encrypt PDF, Decrypt PDF, Restrict PDF, Watermark PDF, Import Form Data, Export Form Data, Convert PDF Colors, OCR PDF, API Polling, Upload Files, Zip Files. Get up and running fast with the pdfRest Postman Collection or start from functional sample code in .NET, JavaScript, Python, PHP, and cURL from the pdfRest GitHub repository. Gold-standard processing powered by Adobe® PDF Library™ ensures the highest quality results. Free to get started with no commitment.
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    Starting Price: $0 per month
  • 3
    PDFKit.NET 5.0

    PDFKit.NET 5.0

    TallComponents

    Create and manipulate PDF documents. Split, append, stamp, encrypt, extract, fill, and more. PDFKit.NET is a 100% managed (verifiable) .NET class library for creating and manipulating PDF documents. It consists of just a single assembly that can be xcopy-deployed. It has no dependencies other than the .NET framework. Central to PDFKit.NET is a consistent and highly intuitive object model consisting of classes like document, page collection, page, canvas, shape, bookmark, annotation, field, etc. The focus of the development team is always to ease the task of integrating our class library into a larger application. Fill text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, etc., and save the form either editable or flattened with the PDFKit.NET 5.0. With PDFKit.NET 5.0 you can populate and consume dynamic XFA documents with the new XFA processor API. Extract all graphics on a page as a collection of shapes with PDFKit 5.0. Shapes can be text, images, and curves.
    Starting Price: $990 per year
  • 4
    PDFBox

    PDFBox

    Apache Software Foundation

    The Apache PDFBox® library is an open-source Java tool for working with PDF documents. This project allows the creation of new PDF documents, manipulation of existing documents and the ability to extract content from documents. Apache PDFBox also includes several command-line utilities. Apache PDFBox is published under the Apache License v2.0. Extract Unicode text from PDF files. Split a single PDF into many files or merge multiple PDF files. Extract data from PDF forms or fill a PDF form. Validate PDF files against the PDF/A-1b standard. Print a PDF file using the standard Java printing API. Create a PDF from scratch, with embedded fonts and images. Save PDFs as image files, such as PNG or JPEG and digitally sign PDF files. See also the export control information related to the encryption features included in Apache PDFBox.
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