Searching "URL to PDF" brings up dozens of free online converters -- paste a URL, click convert, download a PDF. They work in a pinch, but the output quality, privacy implications, and limitations become obvious fast. Here's how Pretty PDF compares to these online tools.
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Every capability, side by side. See exactly where online converters fall short and where Pretty PDF delivers.
| Feature | Online Converters | Pretty PDF |
|---|---|---|
| Content extraction | None -- full page dump | Smart extraction removes clutter |
| Templates | None | 5 professional styles (Clean, Minimal, Corporate, Academic, Dark) |
| Privacy | URL sent to unknown server | Extension captures locally, sends to your account |
| Watermarks | Often watermarked on free tier | Never watermarked |
| Speed | Slow -- server fetches and renders | Fast -- extension pre-captures DOM |
| JavaScript support | Limited -- basic server fetch | Full -- extension runs in real browser |
| Site-specific parsing | None | 8 platforms with dedicated parsers |
| Output quality | Basic HTML-to-PDF | WeasyPrint with embedded professional fonts |
| Custom branding | None | Pro tier logos and custom headers |
Online converters require you to paste your URL into a third-party website. That server fetches the page, processes it, and stores the result -- at least temporarily. For authenticated or internal pages, this is a non-starter. For any page, you're trusting an unknown service with your browsing activity.
Consider what happens when you paste a URL: the converter's server makes a request to that page from its own IP address. If the page is public, the converter now has a copy of the content and knows what you're reading. If the page requires authentication, the converter simply can't access it -- you'll get a PDF of a login screen or an error page. And even for public pages, many converters retain the generated PDF on their servers for caching purposes, meaning your content sits on infrastructure you don't control.
Pretty PDF's extension captures the page locally in your browser, then sends it to your own authenticated account on Pretty PDF's server. The content is processed in the context of your account, stored in your personal library (if you choose), and never shared with or visible to other users. Because the extension runs in your browser, it also works with any page you're logged into -- private repos, internal wikis, authenticated dashboards -- without exposing your credentials to a third party.
Online converters use basic HTML rendering -- often wkhtmltopdf or a headless Chrome instance -- to convert the page. The output looks like a browser screenshot dumped into a PDF. No content extraction, no template styling, no professional fonts. Headers, footers, sidebars, ads, and cookie banners all end up in the document. Tables overflow the page margins, code blocks get cut off, and images may be missing entirely if they rely on lazy loading or JavaScript.
Pretty PDF uses WeasyPrint -- a CSS paged media engine purpose-built for document generation. WeasyPrint handles proper page breaks, orphan and widow control, and CSS paged media properties correctly. The result is a document that reads like a professionally typeset PDF, not a web page crammed into a page boundary.
On top of the rendering engine, Pretty PDF applies professional templates with embedded fonts -- Fraunces for headings, Instrument Sans for body text, and JetBrains Mono for code blocks. These fonts are embedded directly into the PDF, so the document looks the same on every device and operating system. Online converters use whatever system fonts are available on their server, which often means Times New Roman or Arial -- hardly a professional look.
Pretty PDF's content extraction also makes a significant difference to quality. Instead of converting the entire page, Pretty PDF's engine identifies the main content area and discards everything else. For eight major platforms -- GitHub, Notion, Medium, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, Substack, Reddit, and Confluence -- dedicated parsers understand each site's unique HTML structure and extract content with even higher precision. The output is a focused, well-structured document rather than a noisy page dump.
To be fair, online converters aren't always the wrong choice. There are scenarios where pasting a URL into a free converter is perfectly reasonable:
For everything else -- when you care about output quality, need to convert authenticated pages, want professional styling, or convert pages regularly -- Pretty PDF produces dramatically better results with none of the privacy trade-offs.
Get clean, professionally styled PDFs from any webpage. No watermarks, no privacy trade-offs. Free tier included.
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