Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Tcpdf VS PDFMonkey

Compare Tcpdf VS PDFMonkey and see what are their differences

Tcpdf logo Tcpdf

TCPDF: Open Source PHP Class for generating PDF documents

PDFMonkey logo PDFMonkey

Automate your PDF generation.
  • Tcpdf Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-07-04
  • PDFMonkey Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-23

PDFMonkey is your automation tool perfect for generating a high volume of PDFs. HTML to PDF with our restless API or with various automation tool such as Zapier, Make or Bubble. Link it with thousands of tools to automate your workflow and simplify your PDF management.

Tcpdf

Website
tcpdf.org
Pricing URL
-
$ Details
Platforms
-
Release Date
-

PDFMonkey

$ Details
freemium โ‚ฌ15.0 / Monthly (3000 documents, 7 days retention, Load images, fonts, CSS & JS)
Platforms
Make Bubble Automation Zapier
Release Date
2019 April
Startup details
Country
France
State
Paris
City
Paris
Employees
1 - 9

Tcpdf features and specs

  • Open Source
    TCPDF is an open-source library, which means it is free to use and has a community of developers contributing to its improvement.
  • No External Dependencies
    TCPDF does not rely on any external libraries, making it easier to integrate and manage within projects without worrying about additional dependencies.
  • High Customizability
    The library offers extensive customization options for PDF creation, including layouts, fonts, images, and more.
  • Supports Multiple Languages
    TCPDF has built-in support for several languages, including those with special character sets like Arabic, Chinese, and Cyrillic.
  • Wide Range of Features
    TCPDF includes a wide range of features like barcodes, QR codes, page compression, encryption, and digital signatures.
  • Detailed Documentation
    TCPDF comes with comprehensive and detailed documentation, making it easier for developers to learn and implement its features.

Possible disadvantages of Tcpdf

  • Performance Issues
    For large PDF files or documents with complex layouts, TCPDF can be slower and consume more memory compared to some other PDF libraries.
  • Steeper Learning Curve
    Due to its rich feature set and flexibility, new users might find it difficult to learn and navigate TCPDF initially.
  • Limited Support for Modern Features
    TCPDF may lack support for some modern and advanced PDF features, such as interactive forms or JavaScript within PDFs.
  • Dated Codebase
    The library has been around for a long time, and some parts of its codebase may not follow modern PHP coding practices, making it less elegant to work with.
  • No Official Support
    Being an open-source project, there is no official customer support, so resolving issues might rely on community assistance.

PDFMonkey features and specs

  • Snippets
    Share code between different templates
  • Direct generation
    Generate a PDF when updated informations
  • XML embedding
    Insert XML inside the PDF and generate a PDF 3-A compatible factur-X
  • PDF generation
    PDF generation that you can connect with thousands of tools

Tcpdf videos

Make PDF report in PHP with TCPDF | TCPDF Tutorial #1

PDFMonkey videos

PDFMonkey - explained

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Tcpdf and PDFMonkey)
HTML To PDF
100 100%
0% 0
PDF Tools
25 25%
75% 75
Word
100 100%
0% 0
Document Automation
0 0%
100% 100

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing Tcpdf and PDFMonkey.

What makes your product unique?

PDFMonkey's answer:

PDFMonkey is a simple PDF generation tool that can make your task easier with automated shipping labels, invoices or any other PDF hassle.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

PDFMonkey's answer:

PDFMonkey is one of the oldest in the market but also one of the best tool giving advanced features and improved support on automation tools such as Zapier, Make and bubble.

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Tcpdf and PDFMonkey

Tcpdf Reviews

We have no reviews of Tcpdf yet.
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PDFMonkey Reviews

14 Best PDF APIs for Every Business Need
PDFMonkey helps you with automating the process of PDF generation. Using it, you can effortlessly manage your templates and insert dynamic data in them whenever necessary. Thus, it saves precious time for the developers that they would have spent writing codes for PDF.
Source: geekflare.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Tcpdf seems to be a lot more popular than PDFMonkey. While we know about 11 links to Tcpdf, we've tracked only 1 mention of PDFMonkey. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Tcpdf mentions (11)

  • Generating PDF documents in Laravel
    Other popular PDF libraries include TCPDF, FPDF, and Snappy. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • PostScriptโ€™s Sudden Death in Sonoma
    TCPDF has full support for rendering an EPS into a PDF. It can be fussy. https://tcpdf.org/. - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago
  • Python to what?
    Idk whatโ€™s the big problem. Maybe itโ€™s just something like https://tcpdf.org ? Using that for years. Source: over 3 years ago
  • pdf generation
    Running a headless browser to render HTML is a resource intensive task. If you only need to generate simple documents, you're better off using a tool that generates PDF directly. In the old days we used FPDF and its successors (TCPDF was the most popular). Both seem to have recent releases. There's also mPDF , that seems to be another child of FPDF. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Create PDF from Excel.
    You may want to look at a PDF library (Python/PHP/Perl/Java, etc.) You can do all you mention with a lot of flexibility. Tcpdf comes immediately to mind, there is also a Python port. If you want to learn a language, I recommend python. Learning how to make a basic program when it is something that you want, and you know what you want is a great way to learn. Source: about 4 years ago
View more

PDFMonkey mentions (1)

  • From PDFMonkey to Aim Monkey: Building internal tools that actually help
    One of the first features I worked on when starting my career was AIM's pdf generation tool. It was time to migrate off of PDF monkey's SaaS product to our own solution. We had to figure a way of maintaining the same templates we used with PDF moneky but reverse engineering the server side logic, this was quite the challenge on it's own, we managed to eventually do it but ended up with a extra friction and huge... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Tcpdf and PDFMonkey, you can also consider the following products

PDFShift - Convert any HTML documents to high-fidelity PDF using a single POST request

APITemplate.io - APITemplate.io allows you to auto-generate social images and PDF documents with a simple API or automation tools like Zapier & Airtable. No CSS/HTML required.

HTML2PDF.fr - HTML2PDF is a HTML to PDF converter that allows the conversion of valid HTML 4.

CraftMyPDF - PDF generation API for developers who ship fast.

HTML PDF API - Easily generate PDF documents from HTML code with our powerful API

DocRaptor - As the only API powered by the Prince HTML-to-PDF engine, DocRaptor provides the best support for complex PDFs with powerful support for headers, page breaks, page numbers, flexbox, watermarks, accessible PDFs, and much more