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EggPdf

CI NuGet NuGet Downloads License: MIT

Pure C# HTML/CSS to PDF rendering engine. Zero dependencies. Chrome-quality output.

Write normal HTML and CSS. Get a perfect PDF. No WebKit, no Chromium, no native binaries.

Why EggPdf?

Feature EggPdf SelectPdf wkhtmltopdf Puppeteer
Pure C# Yes No No No
Dependencies Zero ~50MB WebKit ~40MB Qt ~300MB Chrome
.NET Framework 4.6.2+ Limited N/A N/A
.NET Core/5+ All Some N/A Yes
CSS Flexbox Yes Yes No Yes
CSS Grid Yes Yes No Yes
SVG Support Yes (vector) Yes Partial Yes
PDF/A Yes No No No
PDF/UA Yes No No No
Tagged PDF Yes No No No
Digital Signatures Yes No No No
License MIT Commercial LGPL Apache 2

Quick Start

dotnet add package EggPdf
// One-liner
byte[] pdf = await EggPdf.HtmlToPdf.RenderAsync("<h1>Hello World</h1>");
File.WriteAllBytes("output.pdf", pdf);

Standard Usage

Page size, margins, and orientation are set with regular CSS @page rules in the HTML itself:

string html = @"
    <html><head><style>@page { size: A4; margin: 20mm 15mm; }</style></head>
    <body><h1>My Document</h1></body></html>";

// To byte[]
byte[] pdf = await EggPdf.HtmlToPdf.RenderAsync(html);

// To a file
await EggPdf.HtmlToPdf.RenderToFileAsync(html, "report.pdf");

// To a stream (e.g. an HTTP response body), with cancellation
await EggPdf.HtmlToPdf.RenderAsync(html, Response.Body, HttpContext.RequestAborted);

Prefer C# properties over writing CSS? PdfRenderOptions is translated into the equivalent @page rule internally — it's not a separate layout path, just a convenience wrapper:

byte[] pdf = await EggPdf.HtmlToPdf.RenderAsync(html, new EggPdf.PdfRenderOptions
{
    PageSize = "Letter",
    Orientation = "landscape",
    MarginTop = 40, MarginBottom = 40,   // CSS pixels
    Title = "Q4 Report",                 // PDF document metadata
});

ASP.NET Core Integration

dotnet add package EggPdf.AspNetCore
// Plain HTML -> PDF download, no DI registration needed
[HttpGet("report/pdf")]
public IActionResult GetReport()
    => new PdfResult("<h1>Report</h1>", "report.pdf");

// Render a .cshtml Razor view directly -> PDF download, one line.
// Requires services.AddEggPdfRazor() at startup (EggPdf.AspNetCore already
// references EggPdf.Razor, so installing just this package is enough).
[HttpGet("invoice/{id}/pdf")]
public async Task<IActionResult> GetInvoice(int id)
{
    var model = await _invoiceService.GetAsync(id);
    return new RazorPdfResult("Invoice", model, $"invoice-{id}.pdf");
}

Razor Templates

dotnet add package EggPdf.Razor
services.AddEggPdfRazor();

// Render .cshtml template directly to PDF
public class InvoiceService(IRazorToPdfConverter pdf)
{
    public async Task<byte[]> Generate(InvoiceModel model)
        => await pdf.RenderViewAsync("Invoice", model);
}

Features

HTML & CSS

  • Full HTML5 parsing (WHATWG spec-compliant)
  • CSS 2.1 complete + CSS3 (Flexbox with auto margins & baseline alignment, Grid, Multi-column)
  • CSS Custom Properties (var())
  • @media print support
  • Webfonts: remote <link> stylesheets (Google Fonts) and @font-face over http(s), data: URIs, or files
  • SVG rendering (vector output, not rasterized)
  • All image formats (JPEG, PNG incl. 1-bit QR codes, GIF, WebP, SVG, Base64)
  • Cloudflare email obfuscation (data-cfemail) decoded automatically

PDF

  • PDF 1.4 / 1.5 / 1.7 / 2.0
  • Clickable hyperlinks and internal links
  • Auto-generated bookmarks from headings
  • Table of contents with page numbers
  • Running headers/footers
  • Page numbers (Page X of Y)
  • Tables spanning any number of pages without row loss
  • Mixed page orientations (portrait + landscape)
  • Watermarks
  • Pin content (e.g. a signature/acceptance box) to the bottom of whichever page dynamic content ends on (-eggpdf-pin-bottom: page)

Typography

  • TrueType/OpenType font embedding with subsetting
  • Weight-accurate faces: font-weight: 300–900 each select their own variant
  • Font fallback chain + per-codepoint symbol-font fallback (⚠ ✔ …)
  • Full Unicode: Vietnamese and extended Latin out of the box
  • Browser-parity metrics: text measured with the real font, baselines like Chrome
  • Automatic hyphenation

Business

  • Digital signatures — one-call X.509 signing (PdfSigner.Sign(pdf, cert), detached CMS/PKCS#7) or external-CMS two-step flow for HSMs
  • Password protection with permission flags — view-only PDFs that block editing/copying (RC4 40/128-bit)
  • AcroForm fields (fillable forms from HTML form elements)
  • PDF merging
  • QR codes and barcodes

Performance

  • Streaming output (constant memory for large documents)
  • Font caching across renders
  • Thread-safe converter (one instance per app)
  • Streaming table layout for 10,000+ row tables
Scenario Mean Memory
Simple page (h1 + p) 13 µs 20 KB
Invoice (table + styles) 86 µs 85 KB
Large table (100 rows) 1.2 ms 939 KB

Benchmarks run on every PR (results posted as comment) and on every merge to main (artifacts uploaded). Targets: simple < 50ms, invoice < 100ms, large table < 5s.

Target Frameworks

Target Coverage
netstandard2.0 .NET Framework 4.6.2+, .NET Core 2.0+, Mono, Xamarin, Unity
netstandard2.1 .NET Core 3.0+
net6.0 .NET 6+
net8.0 .NET 8+
net9.0 .NET 9+
net10.0 .NET 10+

Use EggPdf Your Way

NuGet (for .NET developers)

Package Description Dependencies
EggPdf Core library None
EggPdf.Razor Razor template integration ASP.NET Core
EggPdf.AspNetCore ASP.NET Core middleware ASP.NET Core

Docker (for any language / DevOps)

# REST API service (with Web UI)
docker run -p 8080:8080 eggspot/eggpdf:latest
# Open http://localhost:8080 for Web UI, or call REST API from any language

# CLI (convert files)
docker run -v $(pwd):/work eggspot/eggpdf:latest eggpdf /work/input.html -o /work/output.pdf

CLI Binary (standalone, no .NET needed)

Download a single executable for your platform -- no installation required:

Platform Download
Windows x64 eggpdf-win-x64.exe
Windows ARM64 eggpdf-win-arm64.exe
Linux x64 eggpdf-linux-x64
Linux ARM64 eggpdf-linux-arm64
macOS x64 (Intel) eggpdf-osx-x64
macOS ARM64 (Apple Silicon) eggpdf-osx-arm64 
./eggpdf input.html -o output.pdf
./eggpdf https://example.com -o page.pdf   # fetch and render a URL
echo "<h1>Hi</h1>" | ./eggpdf - -o output.pdf

Web UI (for anyone)

Open http://localhost:8080 after starting the Docker service. Paste HTML, get PDF. No coding required.

Documentation

See the Wiki for full documentation:

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! We follow strict TDD — write the test before the code:

  1. Fork the repository
  2. Create a feature branch: git checkout -b feat/my-feature
  3. Write the failing test first — run it, confirm it fails
  4. Write minimal code to make the test pass
  5. Run the test — if it fails, fix code and run again; repeat until it passes
  6. Run ALL tests — fix any regressions and repeat until the full suite passes
  7. Check performance if touching hot paths
  8. Commit with conventional prefixes: feat:, fix:, perf:, test:
  9. Push and create a PR

See CLAUDE.md for detailed development guidelines.

Sponsoring

EggPdf is free and open source. If you find it useful, please consider sponsoring:

Sponsor

Your sponsorship helps us:

  • Maintain and improve the library
  • Add new CSS features and PDF capabilities
  • Keep the documentation up to date
  • Respond to issues and PRs

License

MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

Copyright (c) 2025 Eggspot

About

Pure C# HTML/CSS-to-PDF rendering engine. Zero dependencies. Chrome-quality output. MIT license.

eggspot.github.io/EggPdf/

Topics

csharpcssdotnethtml-to-pdfhtml5mit-licensepdfpdf-generationpdf-generatorrendering-enginezero-dependency

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MIT license
Activity
Custom properties

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