Comparison of Java based PDF generation frameworks

What is PDF

Portable Document Format (PDF) is an open standard for document exchange. This format was created by Adobe Systems in 1993. It is used for representing documents which are independent of application s/w, hardware and operating systems. This format provides a page-by-page view of documents, exactly as they appear in their printed form, as well as allowing keyword search.

Java Based PDF frameworks selected for comparison

Following PDF frameworks are considered for comparison:

•       Apache FOP (Formatting Objects Processor)

•       Apache PDFBox

•       iText

•       jPDFWriter

Comparison of Supported Features

	Apache FOP	PDFBox	iText	jPDFWriter
Create	√	√	√	√
Update	X	√	√	√
Merge	X	√	√	√
Encrypt	√	√	√	√
Image	√	√	√	√
JavaScript	X	√	√	√
Bookmark	√	√	√	√
HTML to PDF	X	X	X	X

 

Performance

The below chart lists the time taken to generate 2000 similar PDFs. The figures below are tentative.

Framework	Time (in ms) for generating 2000 similar PDFs*
Apache FOP	094424
Apache PDFBox	061781
iText	015537
jPDFWriter	123236

Note: The performance test is performed on iCore-5 machine having 4GB RAM. BEA JRockit (R) (build R26.0.0-189_CR269406-59389-1.5.0_04-20060322-1120-win-ia32, ) with default JVM settings is used.

CPU & Memory Usage

Apache FOP

Apache PDFBox 

 

 iText

jPDFWriter

 

Average CPU Utilization Comparison

Commercials

Framework	Cost
Apache FOP	Free
Apache PDFBox	Free
iText	$2000/Server + 20% annual support (for commercial use)
jPDFWriter	$350 per license per CPU pair + 22% annual support

Note: These are approximate prices may get change in future.