Comparison
Doc2api vs Api2Pdf
A rendering primitive rather than a document product. Cheaper than us for small, quick files; several times dearer once documents get large or numerous, because they bill megabytes and seconds where we bill documents.
Where Api2Pdf is the better choice
Genuinely — if any of these is your requirement, stop reading and use them.
- Much cheaper for small, quick documents at low volume. A 0.1 MB PDF rendering in two seconds costs them about $1.49 a month at 1,000 documents against our $20 — and their floor is $1 a month, not $20. If your documents are small and few, they win outright.
- A full browser renderer, so stylesheets, CSS classes, flexbox and grid, web fonts and JavaScript-driven layout all work. Doc2api's HTML block is an allow-list with inline styles only — no <style> blocks, no CSS selectors, no scripts, no SVG — so a design that depends on any of those will not survive it.
- It will render a live URL, not just markup you supply.
- No request limits and support for very large files, which suits bulk or archival jobs.
What Doc2api does
Three jobs, one endpoint — worth knowing before the comparison below.
1
Fill a PDF you were given
Upload a fillable PDF and its fields come back as a typed JSON schema. Flat or scanned, you draw named boxes on the page instead. The output is that exact document.
2
Design one from nothing
A drag-and-drop designer: tables with repeating rows, bar/line/pie charts, barcodes and QR codes, signature blocks, running headers and footers, watermarks, page numbers, a brand colour and type scale, elements that appear only when an expression is true, and six page sizes from A5 to Tabloid. No markup required.
3
Or hand us your own HTML
An HTML block takes your markup — headings, tables, lists, images, links and inline styles — and renders it into the document, script-free and parsed against an allow-list. Paste what you already generate instead of rebuilding it.
Where Doc2api differs
Flat per document — size and render time are free
We bill documents. Not megabytes, not seconds. A 20 MB, thirty-second report costs the same as a one-page letter, and nothing about it appears as a separate line. Their bill scales with both, so the same job gets dearer as your documents get heavier: at 10,000 documents of 5 MB it is $70.55 against our $50, and at 100,000 documents of 15 MB it is roughly $1,696 against our $200.
You get a product, not a rendering step
Api2Pdf turns markup into a PDF. Doc2api gives you the JSON schema, the visual designer, the fillable-PDF path, an embeddable form your users can sign, signed webhooks with retries, submission history and per-audience field rules. If you are building all of that yourself on top of a renderer, that is the comparison to make.
Nothing to hand-code
Their input is HTML you produce. Ours can be a document you assembled by dragging blocks — tables, charts, barcodes, conditional sections — which a colleague who does not write code can then edit. The HTML block is there when you want it, not required.
Somewhere to look afterwards
Doc2api keeps a submission record for every document — the values sent, the file, the webhook deliveries and their retries — for 3 to 90 days depending on plan, visible in a dashboard and readable over the API. Api2Pdf’s pricing page states no retention policy, no SLA and no dashboard; it hands back a PDF and the history is your problem.
It fills forms, which a renderer cannot
Given a fillable PDF, Doc2api reads its fields and writes into them, preserving the original document. A renderer has no notion of an existing PDF's form fields; reproducing a claim form as HTML is a different and much bigger job.
Published pricing
Api2Pdf's figures read from their pricing page on 7 August 2026. They may have changed since — check before deciding, and email support@doc2api.co if anything here is out of date.
Api2Pdf
| Plan | Price | Included |
|---|---|---|
| Pay as you go | $1/mo base fee | No tiers and no request limits; billed on usage |
| Bandwidth | $0.001 per MB | — |
| Compute | $0.00019551 per second | — |
Doc2api
| Plan | Price | Per 1,000 docs |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 50/mo, no expiry |
| Starter | $20/mo1,000 documents/month | $20.00 |
| Pro | $50/mo10,000 documents/month | $5.00 |
| Business | $200/mo100,000 documents/month | $2.00 |
| Business + 500,000 documents pack | $1,000/mo600,000 documents/month | $1.67 |
What that means for a real workload
Their bill moves with file size and render time; ours does not move at all. So which of us is cheaper depends on all three of volume, size and speed together.
| Volume | Avg size | Avg render | Api2Pdf | Doc2api | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000/mo | 0.1 MB | 2s | $1.49 | $20 (Starter) | Api2Pdf |
| 1,000/mo | 15 MB | 10s | $17.96 | $20 (Starter) | About level |
| 10,000/mo | 5 MB | 10s | $70.55 | $50 (Pro) | Doc2api |
| 10,000/mo | 15 MB | 10s | $170.55 | $50 (Pro) | Doc2api |
| 100,000/mo | 15 MB | 10s | $1,696.51 | $200 (Business) | Doc2api |
Reading these tables: Nothing lines up tier-for-tier, because the two bills are computed from different things. Theirs is $1/month + $0.001 per MB transferred + $0.00019551 per second of compute. Ours is a flat price per document — a 20 MB report that takes half a minute to render costs exactly what a one-page letter costs. So neither of us is simply cheaper: it depends on file size, render time and volume together, which is what the table below is for. Work it out for your own numbers with their formula and ours; both are published.
Cost per document is not the whole comparison — and it does not always favour us. Where it does, it still ignores everything in the section above; where it does not, we have said so there. Read both.
Choose Api2Pdf if…
Your documents are small and quick, your volume is low, you already generate your own HTML, you need a live URL rendered, or your design depends on real CSS and JavaScript.
Choose Doc2api if…
Your documents are large or slow to render, your volume runs to five or six figures, or you want the schema, the designer, the fillable-PDF path and the embeddable form rather than building all of that on top of a renderer.
Decide it in two minutes instead
Upload the actual PDF you need filled and see what comes back. You get a working endpoint and a real API key — no account, nothing to cancel.