Gotenberg is a Docker-based API for converting documents to PDF. You send files via multipart form data and receive a PDF back, without needing to manage Chromium, LibreOffice, or fonts yourself. The tool handles HTML, URLs, and Markdown conversion through headless Chromium, Office documents through LibreOffice supporting over one hundred formats, and provides PDF manipulation capabilities including merging, splitting, rotating, and flattening. It can also generate screenshots, apply watermarks and stamps, encrypt PDFs, ensure PDF/A and PDF/UA compliance, and read or write metadata and bookmarks.
The core problem Gotenberg solves is the operational complexity of document conversion. Rather than requiring you to install and maintain multiple conversion tools across your infrastructure, the tool bundles these dependencies into a single Docker container and exposes them through a simple HTTP API. This approach eliminates version conflicts, font management issues, and the need to spawn external processes from your application code.
Gotenberg suits teams building document generation workflows who want to avoid infrastructure complexity. It works well for applications that need reliable PDF output from diverse source formats without adding operational burden. The tool is particularly valuable if you are already using Docker and want a self-contained solution you can deploy alongside your services.
The project maintains active engagement with its community through GitHub Discussions for questions and feedback, with a dedicated channel for bug reports via GitHub Issues. Development activity shows consistent attention to the codebase with continuous integration workflows in place. The tool has established itself as a trusted solution in production environments across numerous companies and has been adopted by notable open-source projects.
