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Deckle vs Puppeteer / Playwright

Puppeteer (and Playwright) are the most common approaches to PDF generation — run headless Chrome, navigate to a page, and call page.pdf(). Deckle uses the same underlying technology but wraps it in a managed API so you don’t have to operate browser infrastructure.

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Feature Comparison

FeatureDecklePuppeteer (Self-Hosted)
Setup time5 minutes2-5 days
InfrastructureManaged (zero ops)You manage Chrome, Docker, scaling
SDKsTypeScript, Python, Go, RubyJavaScript only
Memory managementHandled (browser pool, recycling)Manual (memory leaks are common)
Page breaksSmart orphan/widow protectionManual CSS rules
Headers/FootersBuilt-in with {{pageNumber}}Manual HTML injection
TemplatesVisual editor + template engineBuild your own
Batch generationAPI endpoint (1-10K PDFs)Build queue yourself (BullMQ etc.)
QR codes / BarcodesBuilt-inAdd a library (qrcode, bwip-js)
Custom fontsUpload via APIInstall in Docker image
React-to-PDFNative supportrenderToStaticMarkup + custom
CostFree tier: 1,000/mo, from $29/moServer costs ($50-200/mo+)

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Code Comparison

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Puppeteer (Self-Hosted)

const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');

// Launch browser (watch for memory leaks)
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
  headless: 'new',
  args: ['--no-sandbox', '--disable-setuid-sandbox'],
});

const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.setContent(htmlContent, { waitUntil: 'networkidle0' });

const pdf = await page.pdf({
  format: 'A4',
  margin: { top: '1in', bottom: '1in', left: '0.75in', right: '0.75in' },
  displayHeaderFooter: true,
  headerTemplate: '<div style="font-size:10px">My Company</div>',
  footerTemplate: '<div style="font-size:10px; text-align:center; width:100%">Page <span class="pageNumber"></span> of <span class="totalPages"></span></div>',
  printBackground: true,
});

// Upload to S3 yourself
await s3.putObject({ Bucket: 'my-pdfs', Key: 'output.pdf', Body: pdf });

// Don't forget to close!
await page.close();
// And recycle browsers periodically to prevent memory leaks...

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Deckle

import { Deckle } from '@getdeckle/sdk';
const df = new Deckle('dk_live_...');

const pdf = await df.generate({
  html: htmlContent,
  options: {
    format: 'A4',
    margin: { top: '1in', bottom: '1in', left: '0.75in', right: '0.75in' },
    header: '<div style="font-size:10px">My Company</div>',
    footer: '<div style="font-size:10px; text-align:center">Page {{pageNumber}} of {{totalPages}}</div>',
  },
});

console.log(pdf.url); // Hosted, CDN-delivered PDF

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When to Choose Puppeteer

  • You need full browser automation (screenshots, scraping, testing)
  • You have strict data residency requirements and can’t use cloud APIs
  • You’re already operating browser infrastructure at scale

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When to Choose Deckle

  • You want to generate PDFs without managing infrastructure
  • You need batch generation, templates, or React-to-PDF support
  • You want to go from zero to working PDFs in minutes, not days
  • You need multi-language SDK support (Python, Go, Ruby)