PDF Generation

react-pdf16.5k★

If you need to generate PDF documents from your React app — invoices, reports, certificates, resumes — react-pdf lets you build them using JSX components. Instead of wrestling with a PDF library's API, you write `<Document><Page><View><Text>` just like you'd write a React component. The mental model is the same, the output is a PDF. Everything is free under MIT. No paid tier, no premium features. The library handles layout (flexbox-based), fonts, images, SVG, links, and page breaks. It works in Node.js (server-side generation) and in the browser. There's nothing to host for the library itself — `npm install @react-pdf/renderer` and start building. If you need server-side PDF generation at scale, you'll run a Node.js service, but that's your infrastructure choice. Solo developers: perfect for adding PDF export to a React app. Invoices, reports, anything you'd otherwise build with a Python PDF library. Small teams: great for any app that needs branded PDF output. The component model makes templates maintainable. Growing teams: it scales, but complex layouts with many pages can be slow to render. The catch: the flexbox layout engine is close to CSS flexbox but not identical. Some properties behave slightly differently, and you'll spend time debugging layout issues that "should work." Also, rendering speed — complex multi-page documents can take seconds to generate. For high-volume PDF generation, you might want a dedicated service.