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PDFixa Core vs PDFixa Pro

PDFixa follows an Open Core model.

  • PDFixa Core is the open-source PDF engine available on Maven Central.
  • PDFixa Pro is the commercial version designed for production-scale systems.

The goal is simple:

Start with Core. Upgrade when your system needs advanced capabilities.

PDFixa Core

PDFixa Core is designed for developers who want a clean, deterministic PDF engine for Java without heavy dependencies.

Core focuses on the most common document generation use cases:

  • invoices
  • reports
  • receipts
  • exports
  • certificates

Core capabilities​

Feature Available

Deterministic output ✓ Java 17+ modern API ✓ Zero dependencies ✓ Maven Central distribution ✓ Basic text rendering ✓ Built-in PDF fonts (Base14) ✓ Latin-1 character support ✓ Images (JPEG, PNG) ✓ Shapes and drawing primitives ✓ Color support ✓ Metadata ✓ Multi-page documents ✓

These capabilities are sufficient for many real-world documents such as invoices, receipts, and internal reports.

PDFixa Pro

PDFixa Pro builds on top of Core and adds advanced document capabilities for production systems.

Pro targets:

  • SaaS platforms
  • financial systems
  • enterprise reporting
  • regulated industries
  • international applications

Pro capabilities​

Feature Core Pro

Deterministic output ✓ ✓ Images ✓ ✓ Shapes and colors ✓ ✓ Latin-1 text ✓ ✓ Custom fonts ✓ ✓ Full Unicode (CJK, Arabic, etc.) --- ✓ Font subsetting --- ✓ Advanced typography (OpenType) --- ✓ Table layout engine --- ✓ Automatic pagination --- ✓ Template engine --- ✓ PDF/A compliance --- ✓ Digital signatures --- ✓ Encryption --- ✓ Commercial license --- ✓ Priority support --- ✓

When to use Core

Use PDFixa Core if your application:

  • generates invoices or simple reports
  • produces internal business documents
  • exports data to PDF
  • requires deterministic output for testing
  • only needs Latin-based languages

Core is intentionally simple, fast, and dependency-free.

When to use Pro

Upgrade to PDFixa Pro when your application needs:

  • international language support
  • advanced typography
  • complex document layouts
  • large multi-page reports
  • compliance output (PDF/A)
  • digital signatures
  • production-level support

Start with Core

Most teams begin with PDFixa Core.

You can generate real production documents with just a few lines of code:

try (PdfDocument doc = new PdfDocument()) {

    PdfPage page = doc.addPage();

    page.drawTextBox(
        72, 750, 400, 24,
        "Invoice #12345"
    );

    doc.writeTo(new FileOutputStream("invoice.pdf"));
}

When your requirements grow, PDFixa Pro extends the same API with additional modules.

Learn more