PDF.co is a broad PDF toolkit. If what you actually need is a PDF's data pulled out cleanly and correctly, here's a simpler, more focused option.
PDF.co is a large general-purpose PDF API: it converts, generates, edits, splits, merges, reads barcodes and extracts data, billed on a credit system. That breadth is useful when you need one API for many different PDF jobs.
pdftojson does one job instead of twenty: it turns PDFs into structured data you can trust. There's a free in-browser converter for text-based PDFs and a developer API for the harder cases, on flat monthly pricing rather than credits.
PDF.co covers generation, conversion, editing, splitting and merging, barcodes and extraction. If you need a single API for many PDF operations, that range is genuinely handy.
It connects to Zapier, Make and other no-code platforms, which helps when you're wiring up workflows without writing code.
| pdftojson | PDF.co | |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Structured data extraction | Broad PDF toolkit (convert, generate, edit, extract) |
| Output formats | JSON, Markdown, CSV, XML, Text | JSON, CSV, XML and others |
| Free in-browser tool (nothing uploaded) | Yes — text PDFs parse locally | No |
| Bank-statement reconciliation | Yes — checks the balance math | No |
| OCR for scanned PDFs | Yes | Yes |
| Pricing | Flat $29/mo | Credit-based |
| PDF generation / editing / barcodes | No | Yes |
pdftojson isn't trying to be a Swiss-army PDF API. It extracts, and it does one thing the broad toolkits don't: it checks its own work. The bank-statement endpoint reconciles the transactions it pulls (opening balance plus credits minus debits against the closing balance) and flags anything that doesn't tie out, so you're not importing numbers that are quietly wrong.
You also get a free in-browser converter that parses text-based PDFs locally with nothing uploaded, and flat $29/mo pricing instead of counting credits.
For extraction, yes: POST a PDF to /v1/extract and get JSON, Markdown, CSV, XML or text back. For PDF generation, editing or barcodes, PDF.co does more; pdftojson is focused on getting data out.
No. Pricing is a flat monthly plan billed per page processed, starting at $29/mo, with a free tier so you can test on real files first.
Yes, through the API. The free in-browser tool handles text-based PDFs; scans are processed with OCR via the API.
It reconciles the extracted transactions against the opening and closing balances and flags statements that don't add up, so you catch a dropped or misread row before it reaches your books.