# Gotenberg

> MIT Docker API that turns HTML and Office files into PDFs

**Category:** DevOps  
**Pricing:** open-source  
**URL:** https://gotenberg.dev  
**GitHub:** https://github.com/gotenberg/gotenberg  
**Added:** 2026-10-17

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## The Hook

Gotenberg is a Docker container with an HTTP API for making PDFs: POST a URL, an HTML or Markdown file, or a Word, Excel or PowerPoint document as multipart/form-data, and get a PDF back — without installing Chromium, LibreOffice or fonts on your own servers.

## What's Good

MIT (gotenberg/gotenberg), release v8.38.1 (2026-10-15), running since 2018. HTML, URL and Markdown go through headless Chromium; Office files go through LibreOffice, which covers 100+ formats. It can also merge, split, rotate, flatten, watermark, stamp and encrypt PDFs, produce PDF/A and PDF/UA, and take screenshots of pages. docker run -p 3000:3000 gotenberg/gotenberg:8 is the whole install, and any language that can send an HTTP request can use it. ★~13.3k.

## The Catch

It converts to PDF, not from it: it won't turn a PDF back into Word or text. It is a service you run next to your app, not a library you import, so you deploy, scale and secure the container yourself, and the bundled Chromium and LibreOffice make it a heavy image. Keep it off the public internet: its URL route fetches whatever address it is sent.

## Verdict

The default way to add HTML or Office-to-PDF to any backend — keep it on your private network.