wkhtmltopdf was a popular HTML-to-PDF tool, but it's now deprecated, uses a 2012-era rendering engine, and has known security vulnerabilities. PDF4.dev uses modern Chromium with a full editor, API, and dashboard.
Updated March 2026
This comparison is published by PDF4.dev. We aim for accuracy but acknowledge our perspective.
wkhtmltopdf has well-documented security vulnerabilities, including Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) that allows attackers to read local files or make requests to internal services through crafted HTML input.
The project is archived on GitHub: no security patches will be released. If you're processing user-provided HTML (invoices with custom fields, user-generated content), this is a serious risk.
PDF4.dev uses Playwright with a sandboxed Chromium instance. Pages run in isolation with no access to the host filesystem or network beyond what you explicitly allow.
Since PDF4.dev uses standard HTML/CSS with a modern Chromium engine, your existing HTML templates will render better out of the box. No template rewrite needed: just better output.
Replace wkhtmltopdf with a modern, maintained solution. Set up in 5 minutes.