Puppeteer vs WeasyPrint(2026)
Puppeteer is better for teams that need free and open source. WeasyPrint is the stronger choice if excellent css support. Puppeteer is open-source (from $0) and WeasyPrint is open-source (from $0).
Full feature breakdown, pricing details, and pros & cons below.
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Puppeteer
Puppeteer is Google's Node.js library to control Chrome/Chromium — widely used to generate pixel-perfect PDFs from HTML by launching a headless browser with page.pdf().
Starting at $0
Visit PuppeteerWeasyPrint
WeasyPrint is a Python library that converts HTML and CSS documents to PDF — using a CSS Paged Media spec implementation for precise control over headers, footers, and page breaks.
Starting at $0
Visit WeasyPrintHow Do Puppeteer and WeasyPrint Compare on Features?
| Feature | Puppeteer | WeasyPrint |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | open-source | open-source |
| Starting price | $0 | $0 |
| HTML to PDF | ✓ | — |
| Screenshot capture | ✓ | — |
| Full Chrome control | ✓ | — |
| Headless mode | ✓ | — |
| PDF format options (margin, paper size) | ✓ | — |
| Network interception | ✓ | — |
| CDP protocol | ✓ | — |
| HTML + CSS to PDF | — | ✓ |
| CSS Paged Media support | — | ✓ |
| Headers/footers | — | ✓ |
| Python library + CLI | — | ✓ |
| Unicode | — | ✓ |
| Image support | — | ✓ |
| Open source (BSD) | — | ✓ |
Puppeteer Pros and Cons vs WeasyPrint
Puppeteer
WeasyPrint
Should You Use Puppeteer or WeasyPrint?
Choose Puppeteer if…
- •Free and open source
- •Pixel-perfect output
- •Full Chrome rendering
Choose WeasyPrint if…
- •Excellent CSS support
- •Python-native
- •Open source