Gotenberg or a hosted API: render-bolt
Gotenberg is free, open source and runs on your servers. render-bolt is the same Chromium rendering as a hosted API, so there is nothing to run.
Price for the same volume
| Service | Plan | Per 1,000 | Per month | Included |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| render-bolt Starter | Starter | $0.60 | $15 | 25,000 renders |
| render-bolt Growth | Growth | $0.39 | $39 | 100,000 renders |
Gotenberg is free under the MIT license. What it costs is the servers that run it and the time to operate, scale and update them.
From Gotenberg's public pages, checked October 2026: gotenberg.dev, gotenberg.dev, pkg.go.dev.
What both do
- Chromium rendering of URLs and HTML
- Paper size, margins, and header and footer HTML with page numbers
- Screenshots in PNG, JPEG and WebP
- The file comes back in the response
Where Gotenberg is stronger
- Free and open source, and your documents never leave your servers
- Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more) through LibreOffice
- PDF tools: merge, split, watermark, encrypt, metadata
- PDF/A and PDF/UA output, and Factur-X / ZUGFeRD e-invoices
- Webhooks for asynchronous work
Choose Gotenberg if documents must stay on your own servers, you convert Office files, or you need PDF tools and PDF/A.
Where render-bolt fits
- Nothing to deploy, patch or scale: capacity grows without adding instances
- Ad blocking, cookie banner removal and Markdown extraction
- Fonts for every major alphabet, isolation per request and protection against private-network requests are set up for you
- A free plan to try it, and paid plans from $15 a month
Choose render-bolt if you would rather not run and scale Chromium yourself.
Switching
Send the same page with these options. Every endpoint accepts POST with JSON or GET with query parameters.
| You want | render-bolt option |
|---|---|
| Full-page screenshot | full_page: true |
| Capture one element | selector: "#pricing" |
| Retina / 2x | device_scale_factor: 2 |
| Block ads | block_ads: true |
| Hide cookie banners | block_cookie_banners: true |
| Dark mode | dark_mode: true |
| Wait for an element | wait_for_selector: ".loaded" |
| Extra delay | delay: 1500 |
| Viewport size | viewport: { width: 1440, height: 900 } |
| Return a link instead of the file | response_type: "url" |
| Page to Markdown | POST /v1/extract { url } |
Questions
Is render-bolt a drop-in replacement for Gotenberg?
Not a drop-in: Gotenberg takes multipart form uploads, render-bolt takes JSON. A typical HTML-to-PDF call maps to one /v1/pdf request with the options in the table above.
How does the price compare with Gotenberg?
Gotenberg is free under the MIT license. What it costs is the servers that run it and the time to operate, scale and update them. render-bolt Starter costs $15 for 25,000 renders a month.
Can I try it before paying?
Yes. The free plan has 100 renders a month with every feature and needs no card.