Alternatives | laravel-pdf | Spatie

 SPATIE

  Laravel PDF
==============

spatie.be/open-source

  [Docs](https://spatie.be/docs)  [Laravel-pdf](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2)  Alternatives

 Version   v2   v1

 Other versions for crawler [v2](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2) [v1](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v1)

- [ Introduction ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/introduction)
- [ Support us ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/support-us)
- [ Requirements ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/requirements)
- [ Installation & setup ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/installation-setup)
- [ Questions and issues ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/questions-issues)
- [ Alternatives ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/alternatives)
- [ Changelog ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/changelog)
- [ About us ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/about-us)

Basic usage
-----------

- [ Creating PDFs ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/basic-usage/creating-pdfs)
- [ Responding with PDFs ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/basic-usage/responding-with-pdfs)
- [ Formatting PDFs ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/basic-usage/formatting-pdfs)
- [ Saving PDFs to disks ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/basic-usage/saving-pdfs-to-disks)
- [ Queued PDF generation ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/basic-usage/queued-pdf-generation)
- [ Testing PDFs ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/basic-usage/testing-pdfs)
- [ Setting defaults ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/basic-usage/setting-defaults)

Drivers
-------

- [ Configuration ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/drivers/configuration)
- [ Customizing Browsershot ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/drivers/customizing-browsershot)
- [ Using the Cloudflare driver ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/drivers/using-the-cloudflare-driver)
- [ Using the DOMPDF driver ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/drivers/using-the-dompdf-driver)
- [ Generating PDFs on AWS Lambda ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/drivers/generating-pdfs-on-aws-lambda)
- [ Using the Gotenberg driver ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/drivers/using-the-gotenberg-driver)
- [ Using the WeasyPrint driver ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/drivers/using-the-weasyprint-driver)
- [ Custom drivers ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/drivers/custom-drivers)

Advanced usage
--------------

- [ Creating PDFs with multiple pages ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/advanced-usage/creating-pdfs-with-multiple-pages)
- [ Using Tailwind ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/advanced-usage/using-tailwind)
- [ Extending with Macros ](https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-pdf/v2/advanced-usage/extending-with-macros)

 Alternatives
============

Laravel PDF uses Chrome Headless to generate PDFs. This is a great solution for most use cases. You can use any CSS you want, and it will be rendered correctly. However, generating a PDF this way can be resource intensive.

If you don't like the trade-off mentioned above, here are some alternatives to generate PDFs which don't use Chromium under the hood:

- [laravel-dompdf](https://github.com/barryvdh/laravel-dompdf) - A DOMPDF Wrapper for Laravel
- [wkhtmltopdf](http://wkhtmltopdf.org/) - A command line tool to render HTML into PDF and various image formats using the QT Webkit rendering engine. This is the engine used behind the scenes in Snappy.
- [mPDF](https://mpdf.github.io/) - A PHP class to generate PDF files from HTML with Unicode/UTF-8 and CJK support.
- [FPDF](http://www.fpdf.org/) - A PHP class for generating PDF files on-the-fly.

These do use Chromium:

- [SnapPDF](https://github.com/beganovich/snappdf) - Convert webpages or HTML into the PDF file using Chromium-powered browsers.