PDFMonkey vs APITemplate.io: Features and Pricing

Last checked: 26 October 2026. Prices and features change: if you spot something out of date, tell us and we’ll fix it.

We make PDFMonkey, so keep that in mind as you read. Everything we say about APITemplate.io comes from APITemplate.io’s own pages, listed at the bottom, and there’s a whole section on where they do better than us. Prices come from each company’s public pricing page: ours in euros excluding VAT, APITemplate.io’s in US dollars.

TL;DR

Both products generate PDFs and images from reusable templates through a REST API, with a visual editor, an HTML editor and no-code integrations. On paper they do the same thing. The real differences are what APITemplate.io can convert without a template, where each one processes your data, and what you pay once you go over your quota.

Choose PDFMonkey if you want:

• a low entry price: €5 a month for 300 documents, €15 for 3,000;
• unlimited templates on every plan, including Free;
• pay-as-you-go on every paid plan, so generation never stops at the quota;
• EU hosting by default (Paris and Frankfurt), from a French company;
• Liquid templating, or official Workato and Glide integrations;
• to let AI agents like Claude Code or Cursor edit, preview and test your templates through our CLI and MCP server.

Choose APITemplate.io if you need:

• URL-to-PDF, raw HTML or Markdown conversion without creating a template;
• regional endpoints in the US, Singapore or Australia, not only the EU;
• Bring Your Own Storage (AWS S3, Cloudflare R2, Azure Storage);
• a SOC 2 Type II report for your procurement team;
• a bigger free tier: 50 documents a month instead of 20.

Feature comparison

Pricing at equivalent volumes

Monthly billing, cheapest published option for each volume. For PDFMonkey we show the plan that covers each volume, and only count pay-as-you-go when that plan would cost more than APITemplate.io. APITemplate.io figures use its PDF-only plans. Yearly billing saves 10% on PDFMonkey and up to 20% on APITemplate.io.

What the totals leave out:

• Images: on PDFMonkey, PDFs and images share the same plan and quota. On APITemplate.io, images need an Image + PDF plan: $35 a month for 1,500, $89 for 9,000, $179 for 20,000 (monthly billing).
• Retention and seats follow the plan. At 12,000 documents with PDFMonkey Pro, files are kept up to 7 days and you get 2 seats. Pro+ (€60 for 5,000, then €0.006 per document) brings unlimited retention and seats.
• APITemplate.io caps templates per plan: 20 on PDF Basic, 180 on PDF Standard, unlimited on PDF Enterprise.

Where APITemplate.io is the stronger choice

Go with APITemplate.io if you need to turn URLs or arbitrary HTML into PDFs without maintaining templates, if your data must stay in the US, Singapore or Australia, if you want generated files written straight to your own bucket, or if a SOC 2 Type II report is a hard requirement.

If you’ve read older comparisons

A few comparison pages still describe PDFMonkey as it was years ago. Here’s how things stand on 26 October 2026:

• Image generation is available. Image templates output WebP, PNG or JPG. (docs)
• Synchronous generation is available through /api/v1/documents/sync, which waits up to 6 minutes. Async with webhooks stays the recommended default for batches. (docs)
• Pay-as-you-go works on every paid plan, not only the top ones. (docs)
• There are two official SDKs, Ruby and Node.js.
• You don’t need to code: the visual Builder is an alternative to HTML Code Templates. (docs)

Moving from APITemplate.io to PDFMonkey

• HTML templates become Code Templates. Keep your HTML and CSS, then rewrite variables, conditions and loops in Liquid.
• Visual templates are rebuilt in the Builder: there is no import from other editors.
• API calls become a POST /api/v1/documents with a document_template_id and your JSON payload. Use the sync endpoint for a one-request flow, or webhooks for volume.
• No-code scenarios in Zapier, Make or n8n only need the generation step swapped for the PDFMonkey one.
• URL-to-PDF jobs have no PDFMonkey equivalent: keep a dedicated tool for those.
• Storage: files stay on PDFMonkey’s Paris storage for the retention you set per template, and download URLs are short-lived. Copy the file to your own storage if you need to keep it longer than your plan allows.

The 30-day Pro trial (300 documents, no credit card) is enough to try a migration on a real template.

FAQ

Does PDFMonkey generate images like APITemplate.io?

Yes. A PDFMonkey template with the Image output type produces WebP, PNG or JPG files through the same API call as a PDF, on every plan including Free. APITemplate.io sells image generation on its separate Image + PDF plans.

Is PDFMonkey cheaper than APITemplate.io?

Below a few thousand documents a month, usually yes: PDFMonkey starts at €5 for 300 documents and €15 for 3,000, while APITemplate.io’s first paid PDF plan is $24 a month for 3,000 PDFs (monthly billing). Around 12,000 to 25,000 documents, the two land in the same range. The pricing table on this page shows the details.

Can PDFMonkey convert a URL or raw HTML to PDF?

Not directly. PDFMonkey always generates from a template. You can send full HTML through a one-line pass-through Code Template, but there is no URL capture. If URL-to-PDF is central to your workflow, APITemplate.io covers it natively.

Where does PDFMonkey store my data?

In the European Union: application servers on Fly.io in Paris, generated files on AWS in Paris, and the database on Neon in Frankfurt. A GDPR Data Processing Agreement is available. APITemplate.io runs on AWS and offers four regional endpoints (US, EU, Singapore, Australia).

Is PDFMonkey SOC 2 certified?

No. PDFMonkey holds no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification and documents its security measures and DPA instead. APITemplate.io states it has completed a SOC 2 Type II audit, so if your procurement requires that report, APITemplate.io is the better fit.

Sources

Checked on 26 October 2026:

• APITemplate.io: home page, pricing, enterprise features, data protection and security
• PDFMonkey: plans, pricing, output formats, HTML to PDF, data storage, compliance and DPA

Looking at other options? See all our comparisons.