NetPdf

A pure C# / .NET HTML+CSS-to-PDF rendering engine. Free, open-source, Apache-2.0.

NetPdf is a true paged-media renderer written from scratch in managed code. It does not wrap a browser engine, not spawn a subprocess at render time, not depend on revenue-capped or copyleft libraries. It converts a single HTML+CSS string into a deterministic PDF byte stream optimized for documents — invoices, statements, contracts, reports, certificates, catalogs.

Native dependencies, honestly listed. NetPdf is "pure managed code" at the engine layer but ships with two permissive-licensed native bundles that are AOT-clean and reflection-free:

• HarfBuzzSharp (MIT) wraps HarfBuzz (Old MIT-style). Drives OpenType shaping (kerning, ligatures, RTL, CJK).
• SkiaSharp (MIT) wraps Skia (BSD-3). Used only for image decode (WebP / AVIF / GIF) and the raster fallback for filters / blurred shadows / conic gradients. Not a primary graphics path.

Both are loaded as in-process libraries via the official *.NativeAssets.{Linux,macOS,Win32} packages — no Process.Start, no executable spawning, no IPC. AOT publish + execution is verified on every commit via scripts/aot-parity.sh, which asserts the published native binary produces byte-identical PDF output to the JIT path.

Installation

NetPdf targets .NET 10 and ships as a single NuGet package — that one package bundles the whole engine, so there is nothing else to wire up.

dotnet add package NetPdf

or in your .csproj:

<PackageReference Include="NetPdf" Version="1.0.0" />

Requirements: the .NET 10 SDK/runtime. NetPdf runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows (x64 and arm64); the permissive-licensed HarfBuzz + Skia native assets are restored automatically as part of the package — no browser, no subprocess, no manual native install on Windows or macOS. It is Native-AOT compatible and trimmable.

Linux slim containers: Skia's raster-fallback native (libSkiaSharp) dynamically links fontconfig. Full desktop and most default CI Linux images already ship it, but minimal images (e.g. mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/runtime-deps:<version>-alpine, debian:<version>-slim, distroless) do not, and you'll get a DllNotFoundException/Unable to load shared library at first render. Install it in your image:

# Debian/Ubuntu slim
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends libfontconfig1 && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
# Alpine
RUN apk add --no-cache fontconfig ttf-dejavu

Optional add-on packages provide non-English hyphenation dictionaries — see Language packs.

Quick start

using NetPdf;

// HTML + CSS in, PDF bytes out. No browser, no temp files, no subprocess.
byte[] pdf = HtmlPdf.Convert("""
    <style>
      body { font-family: sans-serif; }
      h1   { color: #14396b; }
      table{ width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; }
      td   { border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc; padding: 6px; }
    </style>
    <h1>Invoice #1234</h1>
    <table>
      <tr><td>Widget</td><td>$19.00</td></tr>
      <tr><td>Gadget</td><td>$42.00</td></tr>
    </table>
    """);

File.WriteAllBytes("invoice.pdf", pdf);

That's the whole "hello world" — see Using the API for options, async streaming, diagnostics, and paged-media features.

Why another HTML-to-PDF library?

Every existing free option for .NET fails one or more critical criteria:

Library	Issue
HtmlRenderer.PdfSharp	CSS 2 only, abandoned
DinkToPdf / wkhtmltopdf	Abandoned, unpatched CVE-2022-35583, obsolete WebKit
QuestPDF	MIT under $1M revenue, commercial above
SixLabors.ImageSharp / .Fonts	Same revenue clause
iText pdfHTML	AGPL or commercial
Syncfusion / IronPDF / Aspose / Spire	Commercial
PuppeteerSharp / PlaywrightSharp	Heavy; embeds Chromium

NetPdf fills the gap: truly free, truly forever, truly open source.

It is a print-focused document engine rather than a screen-rendering wrapper — layout-engine first, paint-engine second, PDF byte-writer third — all built from scratch using public W3C / Unicode / ISO specifications under a clean-room policy.

Rendering fidelity — what to expect

NetPdf does not aim to render identically to a web browser, and it deliberately doesn't try to. It is a print- and paged-media engine: its purpose is to turn document-shaped HTML and CSS into well-formed, deterministic PDFs, not to reproduce a browser's on-screen rendering pixel-for-pixel.

For the content it is built for — invoices, statements, reports, letters, certificates, and similar documents — NetPdf targets close visual parity with a browser's print output (the result of the browser's "Print → Save as PDF"), which is a different and more constrained target than interactive on-screen layout.

Accordingly, "renders identically to any browser" is not a claim NetPdf makes. Screen-oriented or interactive layouts, scripted content, and pixel-exact matching of a specific browser engine are out of scope. Where a feature falls outside that scope, NetPdf emits a stable, structured diagnostic rather than silently approximating or dropping content — so the places where output differs are explicit, not surprising.

Using the API

The public surface is the single static HtmlPdf facade plus a small set of option/result types (namespace NetPdf). Every overload below returns real PDF bytes for the full feature set — layout, pagination, paged media, text shaping, images, and visual parity (gradients, shadows, transforms, filters, SVG). Unsupported features emit a stable structured diagnostic rather than throwing or silently dropping content.

using NetPdf;

string html = "<h1>Invoice #1234</h1><p>Hello world.</p>";

// 1) One-liner — HTML string in, PDF bytes out.
byte[] pdf = HtmlPdf.Convert(html);
File.WriteAllBytes("out.pdf", pdf);

// 2) With options — page size, backgrounds, and a base URI for relative asset/URL resolution.
byte[] letter = HtmlPdf.Convert(html, new HtmlPdfOptions
{
    BaseUri = new Uri("file:///app/templates/"),  // resolves <img src="logo.png">, url(...), @font-face
    PageSize = PageSize.Letter,                    // or A4; or let CSS @page decide (PreferCssPageSize)
    PrintBackgrounds = true,                        // paint CSS background colors/images (on by default)
});

// 3) Async streaming — write bytes to a stream as they're produced.
// ConvertAsync also takes an optional CancellationToken as a final argument.
await using var fs = File.Create("report.pdf");
await HtmlPdf.ConvertAsync(html, fs, new HtmlPdfOptions { PreferCssPageSize = true });

// 4) Diagnostic mode — bytes + page count + every structured warning (unsupported feature, skipped asset, ...).
PdfRenderResult result = HtmlPdf.ConvertDetailed(html);
Console.WriteLine($"{result.PageCount} pages, {result.Warnings.Count} warnings");
foreach (Diagnostic d in result.Warnings)
    Console.WriteLine($"  [{d.Code}] {d.Severity}: {d.Message}");   // codes are stable — see the diagnostics registry

// 5) Hard failures surface as a typed exception carrying a stable code (bytes are never half-written).
try { pdf = HtmlPdf.Convert(html); }
catch (HtmlPdfException ex) { Console.Error.WriteLine($"render failed [{ex.Code}]: {ex.Message}"); }

// Version string, e.g. "1.0.0+<commit-sha>"
Console.WriteLine(HtmlPdf.Version);

Paged media works through standard CSS — no proprietary API. Use @page for size/margins, the 16 margin boxes for running headers/footers, counter(page) / counter(pages) for page numbers, and break-before / break-inside / widows / orphans for pagination control:

<style>
  @page { size: A4; margin: 20mm; @bottom-center { content: "Page " counter(page) " of " counter(pages); } }
  table { break-inside: auto; }  thead { display: table-header-group; }  /* repeat headers across pages */
  h2    { break-after: avoid; }                                          /* keep a heading with its section */
</style>

• See the compatibility matrix for the supported / not-supported feature list.
• See the diagnostics code registry for the stable diagnostic codes.
• See the HTML→PDF authoring guide for recommended patterns that produce good PDFs.

Recipes: pagination, repeating headers & page numbers

NetPdf is a true paged-media engine, so multi-page documents, repeating headers, and page numbers are all plain CSS — there is no special API to call. You render the HTML the same way; the layout engine splits it across pages for you. The recipes below are the ones you'll reach for most on invoices, statements, and reports.

Long documents split across pages automatically

Just render — content that doesn't fit flows onto as many pages as it needs. No option, no flag:

byte[] pdf = HtmlPdf.Convert(longInvoiceHtml);   // a 120-row table → ~6 pages, automatically

Repeat a table's column headers on every page

Put the headings in <thead> — they repeat at the top of each page the table spans. <tfoot> repeats a totals row at the bottom:

thead { display: table-header-group; }   /* column headers repeat on every page */
tfoot { display: table-footer-group; }   /* optional running totals repeat on every page */

Repeat a document banner (logo / title) on every page

Two ways — pick whichever fits:

Simplest — position: fixed (the element is painted on every page):

@page  { size: A4; margin: 28mm 20mm; }         /* leave headroom for the banner */
header { position: fixed; top: -20mm; left: 0; right: 0;
         border-bottom: 2px solid #14396b; font-weight: bold; }

<header>ACME Corp — Invoice</header>
<!-- body content -->

CSS Paged Media — @page margin boxes (ideal for text headers/footers + page numbers):

@page {
  size: A4; margin: 20mm;
  @top-center   { content: "ACME — Invoice"; }
  @bottom-right { content: "Page " counter(page) " of " counter(pages); }
}

For a rich running header (e.g. a logo image), mark it as a running element and place it in a margin box: header { position: running(hdr); } + @top-center { content: element(hdr); }. All 16 @page margin boxes plus counter(page) / counter(pages) / string() / element() are supported.

Put each invoice on its own page (one PDF)

Force a page break before each invoice section:

.invoice              { break-before: page; }
.invoice:first-child  { break-before: auto; }   /* no blank leading page */

<section class="invoice">…invoice 1…</section>
<section class="invoice">…invoice 2…</section>   <!-- starts on page 2 -->

One PDF file per invoice

NetPdf renders one HTML → one PDF, so split the source and call the API per invoice:

foreach (var (name, html) in invoices)
    File.WriteAllBytes($"{name}.pdf", HtmlPdf.Convert(html));

Keep things from breaking awkwardly

h2 { break-after: avoid; }    /* keep a heading with the content that follows it */
tr { break-inside: avoid; }   /* never split a line-item row across a page boundary */
figure, .keep-together { break-inside: avoid; }

A complete invoice stylesheet

@page {
  size: A4; margin: 20mm;
  @top-left     { content: "Invoice #1234"; }
  @bottom-right { content: "Page " counter(page) " / " counter(pages); }
}
table { width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; }
thead { display: table-header-group; }   /* headers repeat every page */
tfoot { display: table-footer-group; }   /* totals repeat every page */
tr    { break-inside: avoid; }           /* rows stay whole */
h2    { break-after: avoid; }            /* section headings stay with their content */

Two ready-to-run references live in the repo: Corpus/Reports/01-quarterly-report.html (repeating thead + @page footer) and Corpus/Invoices/04-anvil-running-elements.html (running elements + page counters).

Document metadata

The document's <title>, standard <meta> descriptors, and <html lang> flow automatically into the PDF's /Info dictionary, its XMP /Metadata stream, and the catalog /Lang — so the generated file is catalogued and searched by name, and PDF readers show its title instead of the filename:

<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>Invoice #1234</title>
    <meta name="author" content="ACME Billing">
    <meta name="description" content="March 2026 statement">
    <meta name="keywords" content="invoice, acme, march">
  </head>
  <body>…</body>
</html>

Anything you'd rather set from code — or that isn't in the HTML — goes through HtmlPdfOptions, which overrides the harvested values and can add arbitrary custom /Info entries:

byte[] pdf = HtmlPdf.Convert(html, new HtmlPdfOptions
{
    Title = "Invoice #1234",              // overrides <title>
    Author = "ACME Billing",
    Subject = "March 2026 statement",
    Keywords = "invoice, acme, march",
    Creator = "Acme Billing Service",
    CreationDate = DateTimeOffset.UtcNow, // omitted by default (deterministic output)
    DocumentProperties = new Dictionary<string, string>
    {
        ["InvoiceNumber"] = "1234",       // extra /Info keys
        ["AccountId"] = "AC-99",
    },
});

Everything is deterministic: no timestamp is read unless you set one, and a document with no metadata emits none of these entries, so its bytes are unchanged. The XMP stream mirrors the descriptive fields in Dublin Core.

Navigation & initial view

Same-document links work as plain HTML — an <a href="#id"> becomes a clickable /GoTo jump to the element with that id, resolved across the whole document (the target can be on a later page). The #id fragment is percent-decoded the way a browser navigates (href="#r%C3%A9sum%C3%A9" matches id="résumé"). A block, inline-block, or inline-flow element can be the target — an inline target (e.g. <span id="summary">) resolves to its containing block/line position. A dangling #id (no such element) is reported as a diagnostic and the text still renders. On the link side, like external links, the anchor needs its own box (a display:block / inline-block <a>); an inline-flow anchor's precise rectangle is a documented follow-up.

<a href="#summary" style="display:inline-block">Jump to summary</a>
…
<h2 id="summary">Summary</h2>

You can also control how the document opens in a reader — for example, show the bookmarks panel and use a two-column layout:

byte[] pdf = HtmlPdf.Convert(html, new HtmlPdfOptions
{
    PageMode = PdfPageMode.UseOutlines,      // open with the bookmarks panel showing
    PageLayout = PdfPageLayout.TwoColumnLeft, // two continuous columns
});

Both options default to omitted (the reader's own default), so a document that doesn't set them is unchanged. Headings (<h1>–<h6>) already become the PDF outline (bookmarks) automatically.

Language packs

The core NetPdf package bundles English hyphenation, registered under the primary subtag en (American-English Liang patterns) — so en, en-GB, en-US, etc. all resolve to it. Other languages ship as small, optional add-on packages so the core stays lean — install only what you need, then call the pack's one-line Register() at startup. The pack then wires each language into the lang-aware pipeline: hyphenation (or explicit no-hyphenation) activates automatically for any element whose effective HTML lang matches, when the CSS asks for it (hyphens: auto).

dotnet add package NetPdf.Languages.European   # de, fr Liang hyphenation

using NetPdf.Languages.European;

EuropeanHyphenation.Register();   // once, at startup — wires the European hyphenators

// A German paragraph now hyphenates when CSS opts in:
var pdf = HtmlPdf.Convert(
    "<div lang='de' style='width:120px; text-align:justify; hyphens:auto'>" +
    "Silbentrennung im Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän</div>");

The table below is the honest current coverage — what each pack registers today, not an aspirational language list. The pack surface (namespaces + Register() entry points) is stable; additional languages fill in behind it as the pattern data is vendored.

Package	Languages registered today	What it does
NetPdf.Languages.European	de, fr	Real Liang hyphenation patterns. (More European languages are planned behind the same Register().)
NetPdf.Languages.Cjk	zh, ja, ko	Registers no-hyphenation so hyphens: auto inserts no hyphens (correct for CJK) instead of falling back to English rules. Line breaking itself is in the core.
NetPdf.Languages.Arabic	ar, fa, ur	Registers no-hyphenation (these scripts are RTL and do not hyphenate this way).
NetPdf.Languages.Indic	hi, bn, ta, te, …	Placeholder registration — reserves the lang routing with an empty hyphenator so English rules are never wrongly applied. No Indic hyphenation is performed yet (pending vendored pattern data).
NetPdf.Languages.All	all of the above	Meta-package — references every pack; AllLanguages.Register() wires them all.

Text shaping for these scripts (RTL, CJK, ligatures, kerning) and line breaking (UAX #14, including CJK) are always in the core package via HarfBuzz — the language packs only add per-language hyphenation dictionaries (or, for CJK/Arabic, the explicit no-hyphenation registration).

Supported features

HtmlPdf.Convert(html) runs the full HTML → CSS → layout → paginate → paint → PDF pipeline. The compatibility matrix is the authoritative feature list; the summary:

Supported:

• Block & inline layout, lists, tables (with <thead>/<tfoot> repetition across pages)
• Flexbox (Level 1) and CSS Grid (Level 1)
• Multi-column layout, absolute/fixed positioning (fixed repeats per page)
• Web fonts (@font-face with TTF/OTF/WOFF/WOFF2), font fallback, OpenType shaping, ligatures, kerning, RTL, CJK
• Images (JPEG passthrough, PNG/Flate, WebP/AVIF/GIF via Skia decode)
• Static SVG (shapes, paths, gradients, transforms, text)
• Custom properties (--*), var(), calc()/min()/max()/clamp()
• @media print, @page (size, margins, the 16 margin boxes), break-*, widows, orphans, counter(page)/counter(pages)/string()/element()
• 2D transforms, opacity, gradients, box/text shadows, border-radius, clip-path, masks/blend modes
• CSS filters via a subtree raster fallback (blur, drop-shadow, brightness, contrast, …)
• Internal (#fragment) and external (http/https/mailto) links, PDF outline from headings, document metadata

Out of scope (parsed without error; emits a structured diagnostic instead of failing):

• JavaScript, canvas, <video>, <audio>, service workers
• 3D transforms, sticky positioning, CSS animations/transitions
• CSS Grid Level 2 (subgrid), container queries, :has() rendering, anchor positioning
• Tagged PDF (PDF/UA) and PDF/A output

Performance

• 3-page invoice ≤ 200 ms p50 on commodity desktop.
• 20-page report ≤ 1.5 s p50.
• Linear memory growth with page count.
• No process spawning at render time.
• Native AOT compatible.
• Deterministic output: identical input → identical bytes (so results are safe to cache by input hash).

Running NetPdf on untrusted HTML

See also: how to report a vulnerability in SECURITY.md, and safe deployment guidance in docs/security/deployment.md.

Library-level guards protect against the known HTML-to-PDF attack classes (SSRF tags, CSS SSRF, local-file read, SVG animation tricks, data-URI polyglots, resource bombs, image / font decoder bugs, PDF active content, diagnostic log injection). They do NOT replace OS-level isolation. If you run NetPdf in an API or web service that accepts customer-supplied HTML, follow this checklist:

1. Pin SecurityPolicy.UntrustedHtml

var options = new HtmlPdfOptions
{
    SecurityPolicy = SecurityPolicy.UntrustedHtml, // no file/http/data, tight budgets
    ResourceLoader = null,                         // no ambient network/file fetch at all
    Timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10),            // bound a pathological render
    Diagnostics = sink,
    // BaseUri: leave null — nothing to resolve relative refs against
};
var pdf = HtmlPdf.Convert(untrustedHtml, options);
// For caller cancellation, use the async overload:
//   await HtmlPdf.ConvertAsync(untrustedHtml, options, cancellationToken);

UntrustedHtml disables every URL-fetching surface (file://, http(s), data:) and tightens per-render fetch budgets. Leaving ResourceLoader null means no loader is even available, and Timeout bounds a pathological render (the synchronous Convert takes no token — external cancellation is available on the ConvertAsync overloads). Use TrustedTemplate only for HTML you authored; the default SafeDefault is a middle-ground for desktop / batch use cases.

2. Process / container isolation

Run the conversion worker as a low-privilege user in a container / process boundary:

• Drop privileges: non-root user, no CAP_* capabilities, umask 077.
• Read-only root filesystem: mount /tmp as tmpfs with noexec.
• No ambient network access: if you enable outbound fetches, use an egress proxy + outbound allowlist + block route to 169.254.169.254 (AWS / GCE / Azure / Alibaba IMDS), 127.0.0.0/8, 10/8, 172.16-31/12, 192.168/16, fc00::/7, fe80::/10. NetPdf's UriSafetyValidator does this at the application layer; route-level blocking is defense in depth.
• No ambient secrets: no AWS profile, no GCP service account, no .kube/config, no SSH keys, no /proc/.../environ reachable from the renderer's user.
• CPU + memory limits: cgroups / --memory / --cpus. NetPdf's per-render caps (DOM size, CSS rule count, calc body length, image / font validators) bound the typical worst case, but a kernel-level limit is the final backstop.
• No shell execution: the worker never exec's a subprocess. NetPdf does not spawn processes, but third-party deps in your service might.

3. Vulnerability scanning

• Run dotnet list package --vulnerable --include-transitive on every build. NetPdf vendors only AngleSharp + AngleSharp.Css + HarfBuzzSharp + SkiaSharp; none has a current CVE in the v1 dependency ranges.
• Subscribe to security advisories for HarfBuzz (CVE-2024-56732 class), libwebp (CVE-2023-4863 class), libjpeg-turbo, and libpng. NetPdf's pre-decode validators bound the attack surface but don't fix decoder bugs.
• NetPdf keeps a deliberately small, vetted dependency set (a clean-room policy); adding a dependency requires review.

4. Resource allowlist

• If a resource loader is enabled in your service, configure SecurityPolicy.AllowedHosts to an explicit allowlist of domains your templates are permitted to fetch from. Wildcards (*.cdn.example.com) match a single subdomain level.
• Set MaxResourcesPerRender / MaxTotalResourceBytes / MaxRedirectHops lower than the defaults if your use case allows.

5. Output handling

• The conversion produces deterministic bytes (same input → same PDF), so you can cache results by input hash without timestamp-based cache poisoning.
• The PDF preflight rejects every active-content key (/OpenAction, /AA, /JavaScript, /Launch, /SubmitForm, /ImportData, /GoToR, /GoToE, /EmbeddedFile, /EmbeddedFiles, /RichMedia) unconditionally, before bytes are written — there is no opt-in for these.
• <a href> hyperlinks are emitted as /URI Link annotations, but only for http / https / mailto schemes; javascript: / file: / data: / other schemes are dropped with a LINK-URI-UNSUPPORTED-001 diagnostic, so a dangerous link scheme can never reach the PDF. Note the value of a benign http(s) link is still attacker-controlled template content — if you do not want any attacker-supplied links, strip <a href> before conversion or post-process the annotations.
• Set HtmlPdfOptions.Title / Author / Subject to constants you control, not to attacker-supplied template content (NetPdf sanitizes these, but a constant is one less surface to worry about).

License

Apache-2.0.

Third-party attributions: THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.