Your browser's built-in PDF export includes everything on the page. Pretty PDF extracts just the content you want and wraps it in professional styling. Here's exactly how they compare.
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Browser PDF (Ctrl+P or Cmd+P) captures everything visible on the page and dumps it into a document. That means ads, navigation bars, sidebars, cookie consent banners, comment sections, and social media widgets all end up in your PDF. Chrome also stamps the page URL, date, and title across every page as headers and footers. The result is a bloated, cluttered file that looks nothing like a professional document.
Pretty PDF takes a fundamentally different approach. It extracts only the main content -- the article text, images, code blocks, and tables -- and discards everything else. Then it applies one of five professional templates with embedded fonts and proper typography. The PDF is rendered server-side by WeasyPrint, a purpose-built PDF engine that handles page breaks, orphan/widow control, and CSS paged media correctly.
The difference is immediately visible: a news article that produces 12 pages of clutter through Ctrl+P becomes a clean 3-page document with Pretty PDF.
Every capability, side by side. See exactly where browser PDF falls short and where Pretty PDF delivers.
| Feature | Browser "Save as PDF" | Pretty PDF |
|---|---|---|
| Content extraction | Captures entire page as-is | Smart extraction of main content only |
| Ad removal | Ads included in output | Automatically stripped |
| Navigation removal | Menus, headers, footers included | Automatically stripped |
| Comment filtering | All comments included | Comments removed by default |
| Headers & footers control | URL/date stamped on every page | Clean pages, no browser artifacts |
| Templates | None -- uses site's print stylesheet | 5 professional templates (Clean, Minimal, Corporate, Academic, Dark) |
| Custom branding | Not available | Logo, colors, custom headers/footers (Pro) |
| Page size options | A4, Letter, Legal, etc. | A4, Letter, Legal, and more |
| Image handling | Lazy-loaded images often missing | Resolves lazy-load, relative URLs, SVGs |
| Code block formatting | Often broken or cut off | Monospace font, proper wrapping |
| Cloud storage | Not available | Searchable cloud library (Pro+) |
| Selection mode | Always captures full page | Article, full page, or text selection |
| File size optimization | Large files with embedded site assets | Lean files with only essential content |
| API access | Not available | REST API for automation (Pro+) |
Four recurring frustrations that make Ctrl+P the wrong tool for saving web content.
Chrome and Edge automatically print the page URL, date, and document title at the top and bottom of every page. You can uncheck "Headers and footers" in the print dialog, but most people don't know this option exists -- and it resets every time. The result is a long URL splashed across your professional-looking document.
Banner ads, sponsored content blocks, related article widgets, newsletter signup forms, cookie consent banners, and social sharing buttons all make it into the PDF. A 1,000-word article can easily balloon to 8+ pages because half the output is content you never wanted in the first place.
Modern websites use responsive CSS, JavaScript-loaded images, and complex grid layouts that collapse or break when sent through the browser's print engine. Tables overflow the page, code blocks get truncated, and lazy-loaded images appear as blank boxes. The PDF looks nothing like the original page.
Browser PDF has no templates, no font control, and no customization beyond page size and margins. Every PDF looks the same regardless of whether you're saving a recipe, a technical article, or a business report. There's no way to add branding, choose a typographic style, or make the output look intentionally designed.
Purpose-built features that turn web content into documents worth keeping.
Our server-side engine analyzes the page DOM, identifies the main article or content area, and strips away ads, navigation, sidebars, comments, and clutter. For eight major platforms -- GitHub, Notion, Medium, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, Substack, Reddit, and Confluence -- custom parsers understand each site's unique structure for even better results.
Five distinct templates designed for different contexts: Clean for articles and blog posts, Minimal for notes and references, Corporate for business documents, Academic for research and papers, and Dark Mode for developer content. Each uses embedded fonts (Fraunces headings, Instrument Sans body) with proper page margins and typography.
Article mode extracts the main content area and discards everything else -- the best choice for most pages. Full page mode captures the entire page when you need everything. Selection mode converts only the text you've highlighted, perfect for grabbing a specific section, code snippet, or table.
Every PDF you generate is saved to a searchable cloud library. Full-text search lets you find any document by its content, not just the filename. Organize documents with folders and tags. Access your library from any device. Available on Pro+ plans with 25 GB of storage.
Theory is one thing. Here's what the difference actually looks like in practice across three common scenarios.
A typical news article on a major publication site is surrounded by banner ads, video ads, "recommended for you" carousels, newsletter signup forms, comment sections, and social sharing toolbars. Printing this article with Ctrl+P produces a 12-page PDF where only 3 pages contain the actual article. The rest is advertising, navigation, and clutter. Chrome also adds the 200-character URL to the top of every page.
With Pretty PDF, the same article becomes a clean 3-page document. Only the headline, byline, body text, and in-article images are included. The output uses the Clean template with proper typography, clean margins, and no browser artifacts.
GitHub repository pages have a complex layout: the file browser sidebar, branch selector, contributor list, language breakdown bar, license badge, and dozens of other UI elements surround the README content. Browser PDF captures all of this, producing a messy 6-page document with broken sidebar layouts and repository metadata scattered throughout.
Pretty PDF's GitHub parser extracts just the README content, preserving Markdown formatting, code blocks, images, tables, and link references. The result is a clean 2-page document that reads like a well-formatted technical document.
Recipe sites are notoriously bloated. A single recipe page typically includes a 2,000-word personal story before the recipe, multiple ad blocks between paragraphs, a nutrition label widget, user ratings, dozens of comments, and "you might also like" recommendations. Browser PDF produces an 8-page document where the actual recipe occupies less than one page.
Pretty PDF's content extraction identifies the recipe as the primary content and strips everything else. The output is a focused 1-page PDF with the recipe title, ingredients, and instructions -- exactly what you'd want to print and keep in the kitchen.
To be fair, browser PDF isn't always the wrong choice. There are scenarios where Ctrl+P works perfectly well:
For everything else -- articles with ads, documentation with sidebars, recipes buried in blog posts, pages with lazy-loaded images, content you want to archive professionally -- Pretty PDF produces dramatically better results.
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