4 Reasons to Choose LaTeX over HTML for Rendering Documents via API

If you need to generate professional PDFs in your cloud applications, you might be tempted to use HTML-to-PDF tools. While HTML is the backbone of the web, it’s not always the best fit for document generation—especially when compared to LaTeX. Here’s why LaTeX, and cloud APIs like LaTeXLite, are a smarter choice for developers and teams building scalable, cloud-native solutions.

Superior Typesetting and Layout

LaTeX was purpose-built for typesetting and document layout, delivering polished, consistent results every time. Its algorithms handle spacing, tables, and figures with precision—no CSS hacks or browser inconsistencies required. HTML, by contrast, was designed for screens, not print, and achieving professional-quality PDFs often means endless tweaking and workarounds.

Modular, Reusable Templates

One of LaTeX’s greatest strengths is its modularity. You can separate your content from your styling, reuse macros and packages, and tap into a vast ecosystem of extensions for everything from scientific notation to custom headers. HTML-to-PDF workflows, on the other hand, often require custom CSS and JavaScript for each document type, leading to duplicated effort and inconsistent results.

Cloud-Native Efficiency and Scalability

However, deploying LaTeX in the cloud the traditional way means dragging along TeXLive—a massive 5GB+ dependency. This bloats Docker images, slows down serverless cold starts, and complicates your CI/CD pipeline. With LaTeXLite’s API, you can offload all LaTeX processing to the cloud, keeping your own deployments lean and fast. No more worrying about updates, patches, or infrastructure—just send your template and data, and get a PDF back in seconds.

Dynamic Documents and Automation

But now with LaTeXLite’s API, you can inject dynamic data into your LaTeX templates—perfect for invoices, reports, certificates, and more. Complex tables, multi-page layouts, and mathematical formulas are all handled natively. Plus, LaTeXLite integrates easily with low-code automation tools like n8n and Zapier, so you can automate document workflows without needing to build this bloated custom infrastructure.

Why Not Just Use HTML?

HTML is ideal for web pages, but it struggles with the demands of print-quality documents. Multi-page tables, consistent headers and footers, and advanced typesetting are either difficult or require third-party libraries. LaTeX was designed for documents from the start, making it the clear choice for high-quality PDF generation.

Get Started with LaTeXLite

Ready to modernize your document generation? Try LaTeXLite for cloud-native LaTeX rendering. Keep your deployments small, your PDFs beautiful, and your workflow simple.