Documents & Productivity · head-to-head
apilayer pdflayer vs iLovePDF
pdflayer, part of the apilayer family of micro-APIs, renders a target URL or raw HTML/CSS/JS into a downloadable PDF via a single GET or POST call authenticated with an access_key query parameter. It shares apilayer.com's account and billing infrastructure with sibling products like weatherstack and currencylayer, and supports options like headers, footers, watermarks, and page numbering.
The developer platform behind iLovePDF has been rebranded iLoveAPI, offering a REST toolkit for manipulating PDFs (merge, split, compress, convert, encrypt, add page numbers) plus editing images in formats like JPG, PNG, HEIC, and WEBP. Authentication exchanges a public/secret key pair for a short-lived JWT bearer token, and new accounts get 2,500 free credits per month before usage-based billing kicks in.
| apilayer pdflayer | iLovePDF | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | API Key | API Key |
| Pricing | freemium | freemium |
| Formats | JSON, PDF, HTML | PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, JPG, PNG, GIF, WEBP, HEIC, JSON |
| CORS | yes | yes |
| HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
iLovePDF supports 10 response formats, while apilayer pdflayer offers fewer — pick iLovePDF for more integration flexibility.