Documentation

docubend turns Markdown, HTML, mermaid, an image or somebody else's PDF into a document you can render, annotate, put fields on and fetch back in six formats.

curlJavaScriptPython

Start here#

Two calls put a PDF on your disk. The first makes a document from your Markdown; the second renders it.

curl

ID=$(curl -s https://docubend.com/api/v1/pdfs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"title":"Report","markdown":"# All green\n\n412 tests, 0 failures."}' \
  | jq -r .document.id)

curl -s https://docubend.com/api/v1/documents/$ID.pdf \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" -o report.pdf

JavaScript

const made = await fetch(`${BASE}/api/v1/pdfs`, {
  method: "POST",
  headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${TOKEN}`,
             "Content-Type": "application/json" },
  body: JSON.stringify({ title: "Report", markdown: "# All green" }),
});
const { document: doc } = await made.json();

const pdf = await fetch(doc.links.pdf,
  { headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${TOKEN}` } });

Python

made = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/pdfs",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {TOKEN}"},
    json={"title": "Report", "markdown": "# All green"}, timeout=60)
doc = made.json()["document"]

pdf = requests.get(doc["links"]["pdf"],
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {TOKEN}"}, timeout=60).content

The full quickstart takes it from having no credential to having a file, in about five minutes.

What it makes#

Everything you send becomes an ordinary docubend document, not an opaque blob in a bucket. It opens in the editor, takes annotations and diagrams, can be shared and searched, and keeps a version history — and .pdf is a rendering of it made when you ask, so it always matches the document as it stands.

Send	To	And get
Markdown	`POST /api/v1/pdfs`	Real selectable text — headings, lists, tables, links, images, quotes, code
HTML	`POST /api/v1/pdfs`	The same closed vocabulary, if you already have HTML
A PNG or JPEG	`POST /api/v1/pdfs`	One page the size of the picture
Somebody else's PDF	`POST /api/v1/pdfs`	Imported page by page, still editable
mermaid `flowchart`	`POST /api/v1/diagrams`	Parsed and laid out — mermaid carries no coordinates
SVG, .drawio, Visio	`POST /api/v1/diagrams`	Read into real shapes and connectors
A document model	either	Whatever you built, as a document

Back out, on request: .pdf, .png, .svg, .json, .mmd and .drawio — plus an open link, which is not an API link at all and is the most useful one in the list.

What it does not do#

It will not make your wildest dreams come true. docubend helps you build, modify, and transform documents and as cool as that is, it won't grant wishes or create world peace.
It does not merge, compress, or convert to or from Word. Those are browser tools on this site and there is no endpoint behind them.
It does not guess a PDF password. A file that will not open without one needs the password, and there is no code path that tries.
It does not render a stylesheet. Markdown and HTML are set as a closed vocabulary in the standard PDF fonts — one column, no floats, no page-break control. If you need pixel control, a headless-browser service is the honest answer and this is not one.
There is no diagram type but flowchart. mermaid's sequence, class, state, gantt, pie, journey and mindmap diagrams are detected and refused by name, because turning a sequence diagram into loose rectangles produces something that looks like a diagram and means nothing.

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Reference

Details

Documentation

Start here#

What it makes#

What it does not do#