Comparison
kove vs react-pdf
react-pdf (@react-pdf/renderer) lets you build PDFs with React components and a flexbox-style layout engine. It is a nice fit if you live in React, but it is not the browser: you relearn its own primitives, its layout quirks, and you handle page breaks, repeating headers and long tables yourself. It also ties your document generation to a React runtime.
kove is a hosted document API, not tied to any framework. You send a JSON document, the same from a script, a server or any stack, and get a finished PDF back. Pagination, repeating headers and the polish are handled for you, and we run all the infrastructure. kove ships AI-friendly docs (llms.txt, an OpenAPI spec and a simple JSON model), so your coding agent can integrate the hosted API into your app for you, whatever framework you use. A CLI covers local and CI runs.
Side by side
| Feature | kove | @react-pdf/renderer |
|---|---|---|
| How you build the document | Send JSON, declarative | Write React components |
| Runtime | Hosted API, any stack | Needs a React runtime |
| Pagination (headers, page numbers, long tables) | Handled for you | You handle breaks yourself |
| AI integration | Your agent wires the hosted API into your app | No, an agent writes JSX |
| Component-level control in code | Document model plus HTML escape hatch | Full, it is just components |
| Cost | Pay-per-use hosted API, free CLI for local and CI | Free library, plus your time |
When react-pdf is the better choice
Use @react-pdf/renderer when you live in React and want to build documents as components, sharing styles and logic with your app. If you are happy owning the layout and page breaks, and you want the PDF generated inside your React code, it is a natural fit.
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.