embed-pdf-viewer

Open-source PDF viewer for JavaScript

EmbedPDF is a PDF viewer you add to any web app, in plain HTML, React, Vue, Svelte or Angular. People read, annotate, fill in, sign and redact PDFs right in the browser, on a PDF engine built on PDFium that runs as WebAssembly. Apache-2.0 licensed.

• Docs: www.embedpdf.com/docs
• Live demo: www.embedpdf.com/demo

Three ways to use it

Viewer A complete viewer, toolbar and panels included: one tag, made yours with plain config. Viewer docs →

Headless components The same plugins without the UI, to build your own viewer in React, Vue, Svelte or Angular. Headless docs →

Engine Open, read, change and render PDFs from your own code, in the browser or in Node. Engine docs →

Quick start

In plain HTML, from a CDN:

<embedpdf-viewer src="https://www.embedpdf.com/pdfs/welcome.pdf" style="height: 100vh"></embedpdf-viewer>

<script
  type="module"
  src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@embedpdf/viewer@3/dist/embedpdf.js"
></script>

In React:

npm install @embedpdf/viewer-react

import { PDFViewer } from '@embedpdf/viewer-react';

export function App() {
  return <PDFViewer src="https://www.embedpdf.com/pdfs/welcome.pdf" style={{ height: '100vh' }} />;
}

Vue, Svelte and Angular work the same way, with @embedpdf/viewer-vue, @embedpdf/viewer-svelte and @embedpdf/viewer-angular. The Quick start then shows how to use your colors, leave features out and add your own buttons.

Features

Every feature is on from the start, and each one can be turned off:

• Annotations: highlight, underline and strike out text; draw; notes, text boxes and callouts; shapes; stamps; comments with replies.
• Forms and signatures: fill in forms and build them; draw, type or upload a signature, sign fields, and check signatures.
• Redaction: mark text and areas, then remove them from the file for good.
• Measurement: distances, perimeters and areas at the drawing’s scale.
• Pages: rotate, move, insert, duplicate and delete pages, each step undoable.
• Reading: search, text selection, thumbnails, the outline, attachments, snapshots, printing, downloading, and several documents in tabs.
• Any language: Hebrew and Arabic work with no setup, right to left, and other scripts with a font of your own.

Each feature is a plugin. The headless packages let you take only the ones you need.

EmbedPDF and CloudPDF

EmbedPDF is made by CloudPDF. Both are the same viewer, added to your app as a package. What differs is the engine behind it:

The engine runs in the browser, as WebAssembly. The PDF is opened on the user's computer. Packages: @embedpdf/viewer, @embedpdf/viewer-react, … License: open source EmbedPDF docs →

The engine runs on a CloudPDF server. The PDF stays there; the viewer gets the pages it shows. Packages: @cloudpdf/viewer, @cloudpdf/viewer-react, … License: open source, not the server CloudPDF docs →

What CloudPDF adds

• Access control. Each user gets a token that says what they may do. View-only users never receive the file.
• Collaboration. Annotations and comments are saved as people make them, and everyone sees them live.
• Sharing. Public links that can expire, ask for a passphrase or work only on your sites.
• Large files. The first page shows at once, without downloading the whole PDF.

CloudPDF runs hosted, or on your own servers with its Docker image or Helm chart. See the CloudPDF docs.

Sponsors

We are grateful for the support of our sponsors!

Silver Sponsors

Bronze Sponsors

Contributing

We love contributions! To get started, read our contributing guide and jump into the GitHub discussions.

License

EmbedPDF: open source

EmbedPDF is completely open source, under the Apache License 2.0: the viewer, the engine and every plugin, every @embedpdf/* package. Use it, change it and ship it in any app, commercial or not. (The handwriting fonts in @embedpdf/default-signature-fonts keep their own open license, the SIL Open Font License.)

CloudPDF: open source, except the server

Everything you build with CloudPDF is open source under the Apache License 2.0 too: the viewer (@cloudpdf/viewer and its framework packages), the engine (@cloudpdf/engine) and the SDK (@cloudpdf/sdk).

The one exception is the server itself, cloudpdf/server. It is the product CloudPDF sells, so it is Fair Source, under the Fair Core License (FCL-1.0-ALv2):

• You can read, copy and change its source for the purposes the FCL permits.
• Running it needs a CloudPDF license: a license key for a connected server, or a signed certificate for an air-gapped one.
• The license check stays in place. You may not move, change, disable or get around it, turn on protected features without a valid license, or remove protected features.
• No competing use, as the FCL defines it: a product or service that substitutes for CloudPDF or offers the same or substantially similar functionality.
• Each release becomes Apache 2.0 two years after it is published.

LICENSING.md has the full map, including the websites’ content and trademarks.

Third-party licenses

The engine is powered by EmbedPDF Runtime, our fork of PDFium, which is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. PDFium is a Google project; EmbedPDF is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google.