PDF.co vs PDFSharp: Review and Compare

PDF format is widely used for presenting and exchanging documents independent of software, hardware, and operating systems. PDF files preserve the formatting, fonts, images, and other elements of a document, ensuring that it looks the same on any device or platform.

In this guide, we will compare PDFSharp and PDF.co, exploring their shared characteristics as well as the distinctions that set them apart.

What is PDFSharp?

PDFSharp is the Open Source .NET library that easily creates and processes PDF documents on the fly from any .NET language. The same drawing routines can be used to create PDF documents, draw on the screen, or send output to any printer.

PDFSharp Features

Key Features

• Creates PDF documents on the fly from any .NET language.
• Easy to understand object model to compose documents.
• One source code for drawing on a PDF page as well as in a window or on the printer.
• Modify, merge, and split existing PDF files.
• Images with transparency (color mask, monochrome mask, alpha mask).
• Newly designed from scratch and written entirely in C#.
• The graphical classes go well with .NET.

Tools

• Combine Documents,
• Split Documents,
• Watermark,
• Text Layout,
• Protect Document,
• Export Images,
• XForms.

Graphics

• Lines, polylines, arcs, Bézier splines, canonical splines,
• Rectangles, rounded rectangles, ellipses, polygons, pies, closed splines, paths,
• RGB, CMYK, and grayscale colors with transparency,
• Pens and brushes for drawing and filling,
• GDI+ like predefined colors, pens, and brushes,
• Matrix transformations,
• BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and JPEG images,
• Image masks and transparency,
• Form XObjects,
• Clipping through the graphical path,
• Linear gradient brushes,
• First two bar code types (Code2of5Interleaved and Code3of9Standard).

Text

• TrueType fonts / OpenType fonts with TrueType outline,
• Matrix transformations,
• Converting glyphs to a graphical path,
• WinAnsi and Unicode encoding,
• TextAnnotations, Rubber stamp annotations,
• Unicode support in PDF files,
• TextFormatter class for simple text layout.

Security and Encryption

• Encryption with 40/128 bit with a password.
• Document access permissions.

Other PDF Features

• Supports PDF versions 1.2 through 1.4 (including the transparency features introduced with Adobe Reader 5.0); these files can be read and written.
• Can create PDF files marked for PDF version 1.2 (Adobe Acrobat Reader 3) through 1.7 (Adobe Reader 8); newer Reader versions can always read the files.
• Read the content of interactive form fields (AcroForms) (still under construction).
• XPdfForm objects as templates. Use XGraphics class to create PDF-form objects.

What is 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.

PDF.co Features

PDF Tools

• Merge PDF, Split PDF, and Delete pages from PDF.
• PDF filling to add text, images, and 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 PDFs into Text Searchable PDFs. Also, make searchable PDFs into unsearchable or scanned PDF files.
• 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 text with images.

PDF Split

• Split by page index,
• Split by text search.

Barcode Tools

• Generates 1D and 2D barcodes.
• Read barcodes from images, PDF documents, and remote documents via the link!

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, and XLSX.
• Website URL to PDF conversation.

PDF.co Security and Encryption

• User and Owner Passwords,
• Automatic File Removal,
• RC4 40-Bit Encryption,
• RC4 128-Bit Encryption,
• AES 128-Bit Encryption,
• AES 256-Bit Encryption,
• Document Modification Restriction,
• Document Content Extraction Restriction,
• Document HTTP User and Pass Authentication.

Business-oriented Features

• Email to PDF transformation. Supports emails with attachments including tools to extract important data from emails separately.
• Sensitive data auto detector and remover.

PDFSharp vs PDF.co: Comparison Table

Below is a detailed comparison between PDFSharp and PDF.co with their similarities and differences:

Compare PDFSharp vs PDF.co Workflows

Here are multiple examples of efficient methods for managing PDF documents using both PDFSharp and PDF.co.

PDFSharp Split PDF Pages

PDFSharp Split PDF Pages is a feature provided by the PDFSharp library that allows you to split a PDF document into individual pages.

Here’s how you can use PDFSharp to split PDF pages into multiple PDF files.

PDFSharp Protect PDF Document

PDFSharp Protect PDF Document is a feature offered by the PDFSharp library that enables you to apply security measures to a PDF file.

Here’s how you can use PDFSharp to protect PDF documents and prevent unauthorized access to PDF files.

PDFSharp Add Text to PDF

PDFSharp Add Text to PDF is a feature provided by the PDFSharp library that allows you to insert text into an existing PDF document.

Here’s how you can PDFSharp to add text in an existing PDF document.

PDF.co Split PDF Pages

PDF.co provides an API that allows you to split PDF pages programmatically. You can specify the desired page range or criteria to split the PDF document into separate pages.

Here’s how you can use PDF.co to split PDF pages into multiple PDF files.

PDF.co Protect PDF Document

PDF.co offers security features to protect PDF documents. You can set passwords and permissions to restrict access, and prevent unauthorized printing, copying, or modifying of the PDF file.

Here’s how you can use PDF.co to protect PDF documents and prevent unauthorized access to PDF files.

PDF.co Add Text to PDF

PDF.co provides functionality to add text to PDF documents. You can insert text at specific coordinates or positions within the PDF, customize the font, size, color, and alignment of the added text.

Here’s how you can use PDF.co to add text in a PDF document.

PDFSharp vs PDF.co: Integrations

PDF.co Integration

PDF.co has over 3000+ integrations available:

• Zapier plugin: pre-made Zaps with Zapier, all tutorials to integrate PDF.co and Zapier;
• Make plugin (formerly Integromat): all Make automation guides;
• Salesforce, Dynamics 365, Zoho, and other CRM systems;
• Airtable;
• Microsoft Power Automate;
• Google Apps Script;
• SharePoint, Office 365, Box, Egnyte, Dropbox, SignNow plus ready-to-use 3000+ integrations;
• RPA UiPath, BluePrism, Automation Anywhere;
• RapidAPI.

PDFSharp Integration

• PDFSharp integration is not available.