Built inside a logistics workflow
In the beginning, we drew and printed shipping labels using HTML. As volume increased, we moved to PHP for PDF generation, and later adopted Java with iText to handle more complex documents and compliance requirements.
Each step solved a real operational problem, but the same limits kept coming back: licensing cost, infrastructure overhead, latency, and deployment complexity across regions.
Why we rebuilt the renderer
As the company expanded across borders, daily document volume reached millions of orders, invoices, and shipping labels. We decided to build the rendering engine we wished we had.
We chose Rust running natively on Cloudflare's global edge network so documents could be generated close to where they are created and consumed, without browser processes, Java infrastructure, or centralized render bottlenecks.
Keeping design and production in sync
We also developed gPdf Studio, a free visual editor that produces the exact same JSON the API uses. Designers and developers can work from one file instead of translating layouts by hand.
Today, we remain a hands-on engineering team focused on the practical realities of high-volume, cross-border document workflows: precise vector barcodes, reliable pagination, PDF/A, and e-invoice compliance.
Why we commercialized it
Building on the edge did more than solve latency and scale. It changed the unit economics enough that we could offer infrastructure-level pricing.
gPdf starts at $5 per month for 100,000 pages. Large-scale document generation should be predictable for logistics, ecommerce, and compliance-heavy teams.
We built the engine we wished we had, then made it available at a price where generating documents no longer needs to be a major cost concern.