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cURL

Common Use Cases

  • Save a live web page or dashboard as a PDF for records or sharing
  • Generate PDF snapshots of invoices, reports, or receipts hosted at a URL
  • Archive a webpage from its URL as a printable PDF with headers and footers
  • Convert a public URL into a PDF for email, storage, or offline reading
Try it live: PDF from URL → API Tester — send a real request from your browser.

POST /v1/pdf/convert/from/url

This method will process any JavaScript which the webpage triggers when it loads. For example if the the webpage triggers a JavaScript popup window then that will be included in the conversion process. There is no option to disable JavaScript on the supplied HTML page.

Request body

Attributes are case-sensitive and should be inside JSON for POST request. for example: { "url": "https://example.com/file1.pdf" } No query parameters accepted.
To see the request size limits, please refer to the Request Size Limits.
string
required
URL to the source file url attribute
string
The callback URL (or Webhook) used to receive the POST data. see Webhooks & Callbacks. This is only applicable when async is set to true.
string
Set custom margins, overriding CSS default margins. Specify the margins in the format {top} {right} {bottom} {left}. You can usepx,mm,cmorinunits. Also, you can set margins for all sides at once using a single value.
string
default:"A4"
Specifies the paper size. Accepts standard sizes like ‘Letter’, ‘Legal’, ‘Tabloid’, ‘Ledger’, ‘A0’–‘A6’. You can also set a custom size by providing width and height separated by a space, with optional units: px (pixels), mm (millimeters), cm (centimeters), or in (inches). Examples: ‘200 300’, ‘200px 300px’, ‘200mm 300mm’, ‘20cm 30cm’, ‘6in 8in’.
string
default:"Portrait"
Sets the document orientation. Options: Portrait for vertical layout, and Landscape for horizontal layout.
boolean
default:"true"
Set to false to disable background colors and images are included when generating PDFs from HTML/URL
string
default:"print"
Controls how content is rendered when converting to PDF. Options: print (uses print styles), screen (uses screen styles), none (no media type applied).
boolean
default:"false"
Controls how thoroughly the converter waits for a page to load before converting HTML to PDF --- false waits for full page load, while true speeds up conversion by waiting only for minimal loading.
integer
Specifies the maximum time (in milliseconds) to wait for the page to fully render before generating the PDF. Useful for pages with heavy JavaScript, dynamic content, or slow-loading resources. The maximum allowed value is 177000ms (177 seconds).
boolean
default:"false"
Forces rendering with an older Chromium version (r970485) to work around version-specific issues where modern browsers can’t paginate certain page structures correctly. Ensures full content is rendered as a long, printable page.
string
Set this to can add user definable HTML for the header to be applied on every page header. The format is html.
Set this to can add user definable HTML for the footer to be applied on every page bottom. The format is html.
boolean
default:"false"
Set async to true for long processes to run in the background, API will then return a jobId which you can use with the Background Job Check endpoint. Also see Webhooks & Callbacks
string
File name for the generated output, the input must be in string format.
integer
default:"60"
Set the expiration time for the output link in minutes. After this specified duration, any generated output file(s) will be automatically deleted from PDF.co Temporary Files Storage. The maximum duration for link expiration varies based on your current subscription plan. To store permanent input files (e.g. re-usable images, pdf templates, documents) consider using PDF.co Built-In Files Storage.
object
See Profiles for more information.
The header and footer parameters can contain valid HTML markup with the following classes used to inject printing values into them: date: formatted print date title: document title url: document location pageNumber: current page number totalPages: total pages in the document img: tag is supported in both the header and footer parameter, provided that the src attribute is specified as a base64-encoded string. For example, the following markup will generate Page N of NN page numbering:

Responses

Synchronous response
An asynchronous request returns a jobId and a reserved URL that should be used only after the job succeeds. Poll it via Background Job Check. Errors return error: true with a status code and message. See the response examples and Response Codes.
Inconsistent URL Encoding in cURL Output: When using cURL to make API requests, the output JSON may show URL characters encoded as Unicode escape sequences. For example, the ampersand character (&) may appear as \u0026 in the cURL output. This is normal JSON encoding behavior and does not affect the validity of the URL. The URL will function correctly when used, as JSON parsers automatically decode these escape sequences. If you’re parsing the response programmatically, your JSON parser will handle this conversion automatically.