MintPDF

HTML & Markdown → PDF, as a REST API and an MCP server.

No template editor. No template IDs. No dashboard. No signup to try.

mintpdf.dev

Try it · MCP setup · API · Self-host

Agents write Markdown. People need documents. MintPDF is the missing step: send HTML or Markdown, get a clean PDF back, from your code or straight from an AI agent via MCP.

• MCP native — generate_pdf and pdf_from_url over streamable HTTP. Claude can render a document mid-conversation.
• Markdown looks right by default — tables, code blocks, blockquotes and headings come out styled, so agent-written documents don't look like a text file.
• No templates — your code or your agent already produced the content; skip the template step.
• Nothing is kept — generated files auto-delete after one hour, no document storage, no account needed to try it.

Quickstart

No signup, no key:

curl -X POST https://mintpdf.dev/v1/pdf \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"markdown":"# Invoice #42\n\n| Item | Price |\n|---|---|\n| Widget | $9.00 |","pageNumbers":true}' \
  --output invoice.pdf

Want more than 10 renders a day? A free key (email only, no card) raises it to 100 a month:

curl -X POST https://mintpdf.dev/v1/keys \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"email":"you@example.com"}'
# → {"key":"pm_…","daily_limit":100}   # 100 renders per month

Then send Authorization: Bearer pm_… with your requests.

Use it from Claude (or any MCP client)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mintpdf": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mintpdf-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Prefer the hosted endpoint directly? Use mcp-remote instead:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mintpdf": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://mintpdf.dev/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Restart your client, then just ask:

"Summarise this thread as a one-page brief with page numbers and give me a PDF."

API

POST /v1/pdf

Body takes exactly one source, plus options:

POST /v1/keys

{"email":"you@example.com"} → a free key. No card, no verification loop.

POST /mcp

MCP streamable-HTTP endpoint, stateless. Same capabilities as the REST API.

Limits

Self-host

MintPDF is MIT-licensed; run your own if you'd rather.

npm install
npm run build
npm start                # http://localhost:3000
node dist/smoke.js       # end-to-end render check

Or pull the published image, which has Chromium and the fonts baked in:

docker run -p 3000:3000 \
  -e BASE_URL=http://localhost:3000 \
  -e DATA_DIR=/data -v mintpdf-data:/data \
  ghcr.io/trendtweekers/mintpdf:latest

Then it is the same API on your own machine, with no limits and nothing leaving it:

curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/v1/pdf \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"markdown":"# Local","pageNumbers":true}' --output local.pdf

Images are built and published by CI on every change, and each is smoke-tested by starting the container and rendering a real PDF from it before being tagged. Tags are latest and the short commit SHA. Building it yourself works too:

docker build -t mintpdf .
docker run -p 3000:3000 -e BASE_URL=http://localhost:3000 mintpdf

Environment: BASE_URL (used in download links), DATA_DIR (defaults to /tmp/mintpdf; mount a volume to persist keys), ANON_DAILY_LIMIT, FREE_MONTHLY_LIMIT, SOLO_MONTHLY_LIMIT, TEAM_MONTHLY_LIMIT, SCALE_MONTHLY_LIMIT, OVERAGE_FACTOR.

If you want a fuller self-hosted PDF toolchain (Office formats, merging, splitting), Gotenberg is excellent and does more than this does.

How it works

TypeScript, Fastify, Puppeteer driving one shared Chromium (page per request), node:sqlite for keys and quotas so there are no native dependencies. Requests to private and internal addresses are blocked both at URL validation and at Chromium's request layer, so embedded resources can't reach them either.

Licence

MIT — see LICENSE.