The PDF file format is popular and widely format we have. It has become a standard format for storing a document across all industries. With the increasing usage of the PDF format, we also witnessed a rise in PDF solution vendors. In this article, we’ll take a look at two popular PDF service provides; PDF.co and PDFFiller.
With that said, let’s quickly take a look at the service offerings of these vendors.
PDFFiller
As the name suggests, PDFFiller (www.pdffiller.com) is the online app for creating and filling PDF forms online. It mainly provides tools to open PDFs and start filling fields. PDFFiller also provides other PDF-related online tools such as converting PDF to different formats like “Word”, “Excel”, “PPT” or “JPG”. Following are the some of tools that PDFFiller provides.
| Convert & Compress | Compress PDF, PDF Converter, OCR PDF, Add Image to PDF, Edit Scanned PDF |
| Split & Merge | Split PDF, Merge PDF, Combine & Reorder, Extract Pages |
| Convert From PDF | PDF to Word, PDF to Excel, PDF to PPT, PDF to JPG |
| View & Edit | Edit PDF, Delete Pages, Rotate PDF, Watermarking |
| Sign & Security | Protect PDF, eSign PDF |
Primarily PDFFiller provides one online tool where users can open PDF and perform all these functionalities. This tool is heavily based on JavaScript and is also available via integration to different platforms such as Google Docs, Zapier, Dropbox, etc. PDFFiller also provides an API for filling forms.
PDF.co
PDF.co is an automation and API platform for PDF, Barcodes, Data Extraction, and Data Transformations. It also provides online tools for performing essential PDF-related functionalities such as
splitting/merging PDF, document parsing, filling PDF forms, HTML to PDF conversation, PDF data extraction to various formats, barcode reader, etc. Focused on business automation PDF.co also provides free and 100% privacy-focused tools for PDF at PDFLite.co
Though PDF.co is developer-centric and automation-centric at heart. Following are some of the PDF.co API and things you can automate using the PDF.co platform via API or via one of its 300+ integrations.
| PDF Tools |
|---|
| Merge PDF, Split PDF, Delete pages from PDF. |
| PDF filling to add text, images, signatures to PDF and images. PDF filling tools for automatically filling out PDF forms. |
| Read detailed PDF information including raw text information and pdf fields. |
| Turn documents, images, and scanned PDF to Text Searchable PDF. Also, make searchable PDF to unsearchable or scanned PDF file. |
| Create high-quality PDF from HTML code and convert web pages using Url to PDF. Fine-tuning options are available for margins, paper size, orientation, etc |
| Search and replace text inside PDF. It also provides a feature to replace the text with images. |
| Generate PDF |
| Create PDF from scratch and from PDF templates. |
| Convert and make PDFs from different document types such as Doc, DocX, RTF, TXT, XPS, HTML, Images (JPG, PNG, TIFF), XLS, XLSX. |
| Website URL to PDF conversation |
| Extract Structured Data |
| Extraction of data from unstructured PDF, pdf with tables, reports, orders, invoices, scanned documents, images. |
| Extracted data can be exported to different types such as CSV, XML, JSON, HTML, spreadsheets, etc. |
| Has built-in OCR (image to text) text recognition support |
| Barcode Tools |
| Generates 1D and 2D barcodes. |
| Read barcodes from images, PDF documents, and remote documents via the link! |
| Business-oriented features |
| Email to PDF transformation. Supports emails with attachments include tools to extract important data from emails separately. |
| Sensitive data auto detector and remover |
| Many upcoming features such as PDF classifier, PDF translator, etc. |
With these explained, now let’s try to compare these two vendors.
Service Offerings
As we’ve briefly observed, PDFFiller’s primary product is an online paid tool for end-users. This tool works in a browser and users can modify PDF there only.
For example, please observe the following screenshot.
Here, I’ve uploaded a sample PDF file into PDFFiller’s online tool and trying to modify its contents.
On the other hand, PDF.co provides completely free PDF filler tools at PDFLite.co and also provides an API platform for business users looking to automate filling PDF and pdf forms. Basically, PDF.co gives power to business users and developers who can create awesome applications with PDF (like PDFFiller). All APIs provided by PDF.co is fast and secure.
On-Premises API solutions from PDF.co are also available. Enterprises can host this solution as per server need and scale is unlimited. ByteScout which is the parent company of PDF.co also provides PDF-related SDKs, so users who don’t want to call APIs can directly integrate SDKs into their projects.
Third-Party Integrations
PDFFiller tool has integrations for all major software enterprises, which are as follows.
- Zapier
- Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Forms
- Salesforce, Dynamics 365, Zoho
- SharePoint, Office 365, Box, Egnyte, Dropbox, SignNow
Likewise, PDF.co API also available on third-party platforms. Following are some of them.
- Zapier, Integromat, Bubble, and API for programmers
- Salesforce, Dynamics 365, Zoho, and other CRM systems
- SharePoint, Office 365, Box, Egnyte, Dropbox, SignNow plus ready to use 300+ integrations
- RPA UiPath, BluePrism, Automation Anywhere
- Integromat
- RapidAPI
Documentations
PDFFiller is providing a tool for end-users. It has sample documents (mainly US state documents) as sample documents for users. End-user can choose a sample, and then fill it and proceed with the download. Developers can also connect to PDF Filler via API.
On other hand, PDF.co is focused on helping with automating e-signatures and pdf tools. It includes hundreds of tutorials showing how to automate e-signatures, adding signatures, PDF manipulation, pdf generation, pdf splitting, and PDF merging so users can quickly create integration. If you are looking for just one-time form filling then you can also use free and 100% privacy-focused tools and PDFLite.co that provides free and secure tools for business end-users.
PDF.co also provides detailed API documentation for software developers. PDF.co API documentation contains in-depth documentation for all available PDF.co API endpoints and functions. Postman collection is also available for all PDF.co API endpoints.
A huge collection of programming snippets are available for PDF.co. Source codes are available in all major programming languages as well as legacy programming languages too. C#, Python, Node, PHP, Java, cURL, etc are some of the languages in which samples are provided.
These source codes are regularly updated. Lots of video documentation is also created, please visit the PDF.co YouTube channel.
That’s all guys! I hope you liked this basic comparison between PDFFiller and PDF.co. Please visit websites of these solutions and try them out to have a first-hand experience.
Thank you for reading!
