Swevo.FluentPdf 1.2.0

FluentPdf

Free, MIT-licensed fluent PDF generation for .NET. No revenue threshold, no commercial license — ever.

Why FluentPdf?

QuestPDF's Community License (v3.0, effective July 2026) is free only for individuals, academia, charities, and businesses under $1M annual revenue — public companies and government agencies don't qualify at any revenue. If your product grows, or you're a public-sector team, you need a paid QuestPDF license. FluentPdf uses the same declarative, fluent building-block style but is MIT-licensed for everyone, regardless of revenue or company type.

Document.Create(container =>
{
    container.Page(page =>
    {
        page.Size(PageSizes.A4);
        page.Margin(40);

        page.Header().Text("Invoice #1042").FontSize(20).Bold();

        page.Content().Column(column =>
        {
            column.Item().Text("Bill to: Acme Corp");
            column.Item().Padding(0, 10, 0, 0).Table(table =>
            {
                table.ColumnsDefinition(columns =>
                {
                    columns.RelativeColumn(3);
                    columns.RelativeColumn(1);
                });
                table.HeaderCell().Text("Item").Bold();
                table.HeaderCell().Text("Price").Bold();

                foreach (var line in invoiceLines)
                {
                    table.Cell().Text(line.Name);
                    table.Cell().Text(line.Price.ToString("C"));
                }
            });
        });

        page.Footer().AlignCenter().Text(x => $"Page {x}");
    });
}).GeneratePdf("invoice.pdf");

Install

dotnet add package Swevo.FluentPdf

FluentPdf is built on PdfSharp (MIT-licensed) for low-level PDF drawing, with its own layout/pagination engine on top.

Linux font setup

PdfSharp has no bundled fonts and Linux containers often ship without any TrueType fonts at all. FluentPdf automatically scans common OS font directories (/usr/share/fonts, /usr/local/share/fonts, the Windows Fonts folder, macOS's /System/Library/Fonts) and picks the first match from DejaVu Sans, Liberation Sans, Noto Sans, Arial, Segoe UI, or Helvetica. On a bare Linux image (e.g. a minimal Docker base or a fresh GitHub Actions runner), install one:

apt-get install -y fonts-dejavu-core

Or register your own font explicitly, bypassing OS discovery entirely:

FluentPdfFonts.RegisterFont(
    "Roboto",
    regular: File.ReadAllBytes("fonts/Roboto-Regular.ttf"),
    bold: File.ReadAllBytes("fonts/Roboto-Bold.ttf"));

Core concepts

• Document.Create(...) — top-level entry point; add one or more Page templates.
• page.Header() / page.Content() / page.Footer() — Header and Footer are fixed-height and rendered fully on every page; Content is automatically paginated across as many pages as needed.
• Column / Row — vertical/horizontal layout containers; Row items use relative (weighted) widths.
• Table — relative-width columns with an optional repeating header row; splits at row boundaries across pages.
• Text — automatic word-wrapping; splits mid-paragraph across pages if needed. Text(x => $"Page {x}") (inside Header/Footer only) renders the current page number.
• Decorators — .Padding(...), .Background(color), .Border(thickness, color), .AlignCenter() / .AlignRight() wrap whatever comes next in the chain.

Editing existing PDFs

FluentPdf.Editing.PdfEditor opens and manipulates PDFs that already exist on disk or in memory — merge, split, reorder, delete, and rotate pages — complementing Document, which only generates new PDFs from scratch.

using FluentPdf.Editing;

// Merge two files into one.
using var merged = PdfEditor.Merge("report-part1.pdf", "report-part2.pdf");
merged.Save("report-full.pdf");

// Edit a document in place.
using var editor = PdfEditor.Open("input.pdf");
editor.RotatePage(0, 90).RemovePage(2);
editor.Save("output.pdf");

// Reorder and split.
editor.Reorder(new[] { 2, 0, 1 });
var perPageDocuments = editor.Split();
var chunks = editor.SplitEvery(5);

• PdfEditor.Open(path | bytes | stream) — opens an existing PDF for in-place editing.
• RemovePage(index) / RotatePage(index, degrees) — modify pages in place; degrees must be a multiple of 90.
• Reorder(newOrder) — rearranges all pages according to a full permutation of indices.
• Split() / SplitEvery(pagesPerChunk) — produce one PdfEditor per page, or per contiguous chunk.
• PdfEditor.Merge(...) — combines multiple files or open PdfEditor instances into one new document, in order.
• AddAnnotation(index, annotation) — draws a HighlightAnnotation, FreehandStrokeAnnotation, TextCommentAnnotation, or ImageStampAnnotation onto the page at index. Annotations are burned into the page content the next time the document is materialized.

editor.AddAnnotation(0, new HighlightAnnotation(x: 50, y: 100, width: 200, height: 18));
editor.AddAnnotation(0, new TextCommentAnnotation(x: 50, y: 140, "Looks good to me"));
editor.AddAnnotation(0, new ImageStampAnnotation(signatureBytes, x: 300, y: 700, width: 120, height: 40));

Note: ImageStampAnnotation flattens the supplied image onto an opaque white background before stamping it (PdfSharp does not reliably alpha-blend semi-transparent PNGs). This uses System.Drawing.Common, which requires Windows at runtime.

• Protect(userPassword, ownerPassword?) / RemoveProtection() — password-protects the output; PdfEditor.Open(path | bytes | stream, password) overloads open protected PDFs.
• Compress(level) — recompresses embedded JPEG images to shrink output size. PdfCompressionLevel is Low / Medium (default) / High. Uses System.Drawing.Common (Windows-only at runtime).
• Watermark(text, colorHex?, opacity?, fontSize?) — stamps diagonal, semi-transparent text across every page (e.g. "CONFIDENTIAL" or "DRAFT"). Pass null to remove a previously set watermark.
• Bookmark(pageIndex, title) / ClearBookmarks() / Bookmarks — adds table-of-contents/outline entries that are written into the output PDF's outline tree, so the entries appear as bookmarks in any PDF viewer.

editor.Protect(userPassword: "letMeIn", ownerPassword: "adminOnly");
editor.Compress(PdfCompressionLevel.Medium);
editor.Watermark("CONFIDENTIAL");
editor.Bookmark(0, "Introduction");
editor.Save("protected-compressed.pdf");

using var reopened = PdfEditor.Open("protected-compressed.pdf", "letMeIn");

• ToArray() / Save(path) — serialize the current state.

Pagination model

Every layout node knows how to measure itself and render as much of itself as fits in the remaining space, handing back a "continuation" for whatever didn't fit. Text and Table split mid-content (mid-line, mid-row); Row, Border, and Align move as a whole block to the next page if they don't fit (documented below as current limitations).

Known limitations (v1.0)

• Row, Border, and Align are non-splittable — they move wholesale to the next page rather than splitting internally. Column and Table are the primary paginated containers.
• No image support yet.
• No cell-level borders/backgrounds inside Table (wrap individual cells with .Border() / .Background() as a workaround).

Contributions and issues for any of the above are welcome.

Design goals

• MIT licensed, forever. No commercial tier, no revenue threshold.
• Small, understandable engine. A handful of composable IElement nodes rather than a large proprietary layout DSL.
• Works out of the box on Linux CI, given a system font is installed.

Related Packages

Package	Downloads	Description
Swevo.FluentExcel		A free, MIT-licensed fluent Excel generation library for

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Also by the same author

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License

MIT © Justin Bannister