Generate PDFs from HTML with Puppeteer or API

In this video, we go over how to generate PDFs from HTML using Puppeteer or a simple PDF API. I walk through two ways to generate PDFs from webpages or raw HTML: using page.pdf() with Puppeteer using the Browserless PDF API with a single HTTP request I also cover why HTML-to-PDF needs a real headless browser, how to generate PDFs from both URLs and HTML strings, useful options like margins, headers, footers, and page numbers, and why local Puppeteer setups often get painful in production. What you’ll learn: Why many HTML-to-PDF tools fail on modern JavaScript-heavy pages How to generate a PDF from a URL with Puppeteer How to generate a PDF from an HTML string Useful page.pdf() options for real-world documents Why PDF generation breaks in production How to use the Browserless PDF API How to switch from local Puppeteer to Browserless BaaS Useful for: invoices, reports, dashboards, tickets, coupons, documentation exports, and other HTML-to-PDF workflows. Check out Browserless: https://www.browserless.io/?utm_sourc... Sign up for Browserless for free: https://www.browserless.io/signup/ema... Additional Links: Browserless PDF API docs: https://docs.browserless.io/rest-apis... Browserless signup: https://www.browserless.io/signup Full guide: https://www.browserless.io/blog/puppe... Puppeteer docs: https://pptr.dev More advanced bot-detection requiring PDF docs: https://docs.browserless.io/rest-apis... Chapters 00:00 Generate PDFs with Puppeteer or API 00:35 Why PDF libraries break without javascript rendering 01:03 Why HTML to PDF needs a headless browser 01:30 Install Puppeteer and Node.js 01:47 Generate PDF from a URL with Puppeteer 02:18 Generate PDF from an HTML string 02:43 PDF options: margins, headers, footers, page numbers 03:36 Why Puppeteer PDF generation breaks in production 04:13 Generate PDF with Browserless PDF API 05:04 Generate PDF with Browserless BaaS 05:47 Recap outro