Comparison
kove vs Gotenberg
Gotenberg wraps Chromium and LibreOffice in a Docker container and converts HTML, Markdown and Office files to PDF. It is a solid converter, but you still bring the HTML and CSS, and you host and scale the container yourself. The pagination problems, like repeating table headers and clean page breaks, are still your job to solve in CSS.
kove is a hosted document API, not something you run. You send a JSON document and get a finished PDF back, with pagination and polish handled, and we run all the infrastructure. Because kove ships AI-friendly docs (llms.txt, an OpenAPI spec and a simple JSON model), your coding agent can integrate the hosted API into your app for you: you describe the documents you need, it wires in the calls, you review and ship. A CLI covers local and CI runs.
Side by side
| Feature | kove | Gotenberg |
|---|---|---|
| How you build the document | Send JSON, declarative | Send HTML, Markdown or Office files |
| Hosting | Hosted, we run and scale it | You host and scale the container |
| Pagination polish | Handled for you | You write the CSS |
| AI integration | Your agent wires the hosted API into your app | No |
| Office file conversion (docx, xlsx) | Not the focus, JSON documents | Yes, built in |
| Cost | Pay-per-use hosted API, free CLI for local and CI | Free software, plus your servers |
When Gotenberg is the better choice
Use Gotenberg when you want to self-host everything, already have HTML templates you are happy with, or need to convert existing Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) to PDF. If running your own container is fine and you want full control, it is a good open-source converter.
Send JSON. Get a finished PDF.
A hosted document API. Your coding agent wires it into your app for you, with no infra to run.