PrintFriendly requires you to manually click-remove every unwanted element before generating a PDF. There is a better way — automatic content extraction that strips clutter without manual cleanup, plus professional templates that PrintFriendly does not offer.
Free — 3 PDFs per month with all templates. No credit card required.
PrintFriendly is one of the oldest web-to-PDF tools. Its approach has not changed much.
PrintFriendly's core workflow is manual element removal. You click the extension, see a preview of the page, and then click on individual elements — images, paragraphs, ads, navigation bars, sidebars — to remove them one by one. When you are satisfied with what remains, you generate the PDF.
This made sense in 2010 when there were no better options. In 2026, automatic content extraction can identify the main article content and strip clutter without manual work. The reasons people search for PrintFriendly alternatives:
PrintFriendly has lasted this long for good reasons.
PrintFriendly's visual editing interface is genuinely useful for specific situations. When you need precise control over exactly which elements appear in the PDF, the ability to click-remove individual items is powerful. You can keep one image but remove another, keep one sidebar widget but remove the rest.
It is also widely known and established. With millions of users and years of Chrome Web Store history, PrintFriendly is a trusted name that works reliably across most websites. It does not require an account to use on the free tier, which removes friction for occasional users.
The basic ad removal works reasonably well — PrintFriendly's heuristics identify common ad containers and hide them in the preview. You still need to manually remove the remaining clutter, but the starting point is cleaner than raw browser print.
The core approach of manual cleanup has not kept up with modern extraction technology.
Every page requires clicking to remove unwanted elements. Navigation bars, cookie banners, related articles, comment sections, share buttons — each one needs a manual click. For complex pages with 15-20 unwanted elements, this takes significant time.
PrintFriendly's free tier includes branding in the PDF output. The "PrintFriendly.com" watermark appears in the document, which looks unprofessional for anything you share with others. Removing it requires their paid plan.
Every PrintFriendly PDF uses the same basic formatting. No font choices, no typography control, no professional layouts. The output is functional but looks like a stripped-down webpage, not a designed document.
PrintFriendly treats every website identically. A GitHub README, a Stack Overflow answer, and a news article all go through the same generic process. No platform-specific optimizations for code blocks, threaded discussions, or technical content.
PrintFriendly generates a PDF and you download it. There is no cloud library, no search, no organization. Every PDF is a one-time download that you manage yourself in your file system.
Side-by-side comparison for web-to-PDF conversion.
| Feature | PrintFriendly | Pretty PDF |
|---|---|---|
| Content extraction | Manual click-to-remove | Automatic smart extraction |
| Templates | None — basic formatting | 5 professional templates |
| Free tier output | Includes PrintFriendly branding | Clean output, no branding |
| Site-specific parsing | None | 8 platforms with dedicated parsers |
| Cloud library | Not available | Yes — with full-text search (Pro+) |
| Manual element control | Yes — visual click interface | Selection Mode for manual control |
| Developer API | Not available | REST API (Pro+) |
| Price | Free (ads) / ~$5/mo | Free (3/mo) / $5/mo / $12/mo |
The fundamental difference is automatic vs manual. PrintFriendly requires you to visually identify and click-remove every unwanted element on every page. Pretty PDF's extraction engine does this automatically — identifying the main content area and stripping navigation, ads, sidebars, and clutter without any manual intervention.
For a single simple page, the time difference is small. For regular use across complex pages, the difference compounds. A news article with 15 unwanted elements takes 30-60 seconds of clicking in PrintFriendly. In Pretty PDF, it takes zero clicks — the extraction happens automatically when you generate the PDF.
Beyond extraction, Pretty PDF offers professional templates (Clean, Minimal, Corporate, Academic, Dark Mode), site-specific parsers for 8 major platforms, cloud storage with full-text search, and a REST API for developers. PrintFriendly offers none of these.
Pretty PDF's free tier also produces clean output with no branding — 3 PDFs per month with all templates. PrintFriendly's free tier includes branding in the output.
A lightweight bookmarklet that lets you click elements to remove them before printing. Similar approach to PrintFriendly but even simpler — free, no account required, and no extension to install. However, it has no templates, no storage, and the same manual cleanup requirement.
Mercury Reader was a popular reader-mode extension that stripped pages to article content. It was discontinued when Postlight (its creator) open-sourced the parser and shut down the extension. Pretty PDF's article extraction serves the same purpose with the added benefit of PDF templates and output.
Free — 3 PDFs per month with all templates. No credit card required.
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