WeasyPrint
Shares rank 2 of 3 PDF libraries by recommenders
Free open-source tool that turns HTML and CSS into PDFs, with paged-media support and active maintenance; its most common caveat is slow runs.
Free open-source tool that turns HTML and CSS into PDFs, with paged-media support and active maintenance; its most common caveat is slow runs.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 71%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Open source and actively maintained
“WeasyPrint as a project is very much alive on Github. Filing a bug there might get your problem solved.”
Comment from 28 May 2026 in “I Bypassed Adobe and Microsoft to Build a Git-Tracked Book Production Pipeline” “is OSS and supports CSS Paged media”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 on Hacker News Works well without browser dependencies
“works really well, and they have sample stylesheets on their website that are a good starting point”
Comment from 1 Nov 2026 in “Novellas with Groff” “does not have browser dependencies either, which is great”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 on Hacker News
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow on iterative builds
“The latter step is a bit slow, so I proofread iterative content updates in the HTML.”
Comment from 28 May 2026 in “I Bypassed Adobe and Microsoft to Build a Git-Tracked Book Production Pipeline” Fails Adobe PDF/X validation
“then ran them through Adobe's PDF/X validator and they kept failing”
Comment from 27 May 2026 in “I Bypassed Adobe and Microsoft to Build a Git-Tracked Book Production Pipeline”
Other PDF libraries people recommend
The two most recommended other PDF libraries, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 3 PDF libraries, rankedWhat people said
All 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“works really well, and they have sample stylesheets on their website that are a good starting point”
“The open-source solutions we tried before were annoying”
“The latter step is a bit slow, so I proofread iterative content updates in the HTML.”
“WeasyPrint as a project is very much alive on Github. Filing a bug there might get your problem solved.”
“then ran them through Adobe's PDF/X validator and they kept failing”
“I built by own markdown to HTML to PDF/X-1a processor using Python, WeasyPrint, and ghostscript”
“does not have browser dependencies either, which is great”
“is OSS and supports CSS Paged media”
“WeasyPrint was deadlocking a single-worker setup because it fetched the logo via HTTP.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.