Filecook vs Api2Pdf at a glance
| Filecook | Api2Pdf | |
|---|---|---|
| Rendering engines | One — latest Chromium | Several — Headless Chrome, wkhtmltopdf, LibreOffice |
| Office file conversion (.docx, .xlsx) | Not offered | Yes, via LibreOffice |
| PDF merge / barcode / thumbnails | Not offered | Yes |
| Pricing model | Monthly plans with a free tier | Pay-per-use, no monthly commitment |
| Free tier | 500 renders / month | Check current terms |
| Self-hosted option | Perpetual licence available | Not offered |
Competitor details checked August 2026 from public documentation and pricing pages. Products change — verify current terms with Api2Pdf before deciding.
Choose Api2Pdf for range
If your workload is genuinely mixed — converting uploaded Word documents, merging PDFs, generating barcodes, and rendering HTML — Api2Pdf covers all of it behind one key, and pay-per-use suits spiky or unpredictable volume. Filecook does none of those things and has no plans to.
Choose Filecook for one thing done properly
Multiple engines mean multiple rendering behaviours to learn, and wkhtmltopdf in particular is built on a long-unmaintained WebKit that misrenders modern CSS. If every document you produce starts life as HTML, a single current engine is a simpler thing to reason about.
- One engine, one behaviour. No per-request decision about which renderer to use.
- Predictable monthly cost. Per-render pricing rather than per-use metering.
- Same endpoint for images. PDF and PNG/JPEG from one payload and one quota.
Running both
These are not mutually exclusive. Several teams keep a general-purpose converter for occasional Office and merge work while routing their high-volume HTML rendering somewhere focused. That is a perfectly reasonable architecture.