---
title: "Convert HTML to PDF in Node.js With One API Call"
description: "Convert HTML to PDF in Node.js with one API call. Send your markup with format: pdf and get an A4 vector PDF back, fonts embedded and no Chrome to run."
url: "https://html2img.com/articles/html-to-pdf-nodejs/"
section: "Tutorials"
published: "2026-08-26T08:10:34.138Z"
updated: "2026-08-26T08:10:34.138Z"
---
# Convert HTML to PDF in Node.js With One API Call
By Mike Griffiths. https://html2img.com/articles/html-to-pdf-nodejs/
You have an invoice, a receipt or a report that already exists as HTML and CSS, and you need a Node.js process to turn it into a PDF. Not a person pressing print, a process: a payment webhook, a queue worker, a cron job, an API route. The usual advice is Puppeteer, which means shipping a copy of Chrome with your application, pinning its version, feeding it fonts and watching its memory. That is a lot of infrastructure to own for a document.
The alternative is one HTTP request. You send the markup with `format: "pdf"` and get back a URL to an A4 vector PDF: selectable text, embedded webfonts, automatic pagination. This guide does that in Node.js with the official `@html2img/client` package, then covers what a real integration needs on top: a template, downloading and attaching the file, fixed-width layouts, error handling and long documents.
## What one request gives you
The [HTML to PDF API](https://html2img.com/html-to-pdf) is the same endpoint as image rendering with one extra parameter. Your HTML is rendered in current Chrome and returned as a real PDF rather than a screenshot wrapped in a PDF shell:
- Text is selectable and searchable, so the document works with copy and paste, search and screen readers.
- Webfonts are embedded. Google Fonts, Adobe Fonts and self-hosted `@font-face` all load server-side and travel with the file.
- Text, borders, shapes and gradients are vector, so they stay sharp at any zoom. Only `` elements and canvases are embedded as pixels.
- Long content paginates automatically across as many A4 pages as it needs.
- Background colours, gradients and images are included by default.
- The response `url` points at a `.pdf` on the CDN, served as `application/pdf`. A PDF costs the same single credit as an image.
Two things to know before you write any markup. Pages are A4 portrait, with no US Letter, landscape or custom sizes, and there are no header and footer slots. And the document is rendered with your normal screen CSS: `@media print` rules are not applied, so everything the PDF needs belongs in your standard styles. The [format parameter docs](https://html2img.com/docs/parameters/format) cover the full behaviour, including which sizing parameters are ignored in PDF mode (`width`, `height`, `dpi`, `fullpage` and `selector`).
## Step 1: install the client and store your key
The official package has no runtime dependencies and is built on the standard `fetch` API, so it runs unchanged in Node.js 18 or newer, Bun, Deno and serverless runtimes.
```
npm install @html2img/client
```
Get an API key from the dashboard and put it in the environment, without a public prefix. This is a server-side client: the key spends credits, so it never goes anywhere near browser code.
```
# .env
HTML2IMG_API_KEY=your-api-key
```
The [authentication docs](https://html2img.com/docs/authentication) cover rotating keys and checking a key with `GET /api/me`, which does not consume a credit.
## Step 2: render your first PDF
The whole conversion is one call. Set `format` to `'pdf'` and the response carries the URL of the finished document.
```
// render-pdf.mjs
import { Html2img } from '@html2img/client';
const client = new Html2img(process.env.HTML2IMG_API_KEY);
const response = await client.html({
html: `
Invoice #1042
Due within 30 days.
`,
format: 'pdf',
});
console.log(response.url); // https://i.html2img.com/....pdf
console.log(response.creditsRemaining); // credits left on the account
```
Run it with `node --env-file=.env render-pdf.mjs` on Node 20.6 or newer, or load the `.env` file with `dotenv` on older versions. The response is a typed `RenderResponse` with `url`, `id`, `creditsRemaining`, `expiresAt` and `raw`, which holds the full decoded JSON if you want the envelope as the API sent it.
That is a working PDF. Everything from here is about making it a document you would put in front of a customer.
## Step 3: build the document from a template
Keep the HTML in a function that takes your data and returns a complete document. Three rules make the output behave:
1. Write a flowing layout, not a fixed one. The A4 page is roughly 794 CSS pixels wide and content reflows to that width, so use percentages and flex rather than a hard `width: 1200px`.
2. Load fonts with a `` tag or `@import` in the head. They are fetched at render time and embedded in the PDF.
3. Escape every value you interpolate. A customer called `