Alright alright, how can I host Gotenberg for free, and be calling to it at my main website? I wanna be converting files to pdf

Grok 4.20

Answer: You can host Gotenberg for free by running its official Docker image on your own server, a local machine, or a free-tier VM like Oracle Cloud Always Free, then call its HTTP API endpoint directly from your main website to convert files to PDF.

Gotenberg is an open-source, stateless API that converts various document formats to PDF using headless Chrome and other tools; its official Docker image makes self-hosting straightforward and completely free of licensing costs. To set it up, install Docker on your host, then run a command like 'docker run --rm -p 3000:3000 gotenberg/gotenberg:8' which starts the service locally or on a cloud VM accessible via the internet. For a production-like free option, sign up for Oracle Cloud's Always Free tier to get a small VM where you can install Docker and run Gotenberg persistently, mapping the port so your website can reach it. Once running, integrate it with your main website by sending multipart/form-data POST requests to the appropriate endpoint such as http://your-gotenberg-host:3000/forms/libreoffice/convert, attaching the input files in the request body; this works whether your site is on Vercel, a custom server, or elsewhere as long as it can make outbound HTTP calls. Consider security by restricting access with firewall rules, API keys if you customize the setup, or running both services in the same Docker network if your website is also containerized to avoid exposing the Gotenberg instance publicly. Free hosting has limitations like potential downtime on non-dedicated free tiers or the need for your own domain/DNS setup, but it fully meets your goal of file-to-PDF conversion without any paid services, and Gotenberg's documentation provides ready examples in multiple languages for easy website integration.

GPT-5.4

Answer: The most practical free setup is to run Gotenberg as a Docker container on a free-tier host like Fly.io, Render, Railway trial credits, or an Oracle Cloud Always Free VM, then call it from your main website through a small backend proxy rather than directly from the browser.

Gotenberg is a server application, so you need a place that can run Docker and stay reachable over HTTPS. Truly permanent “free” hosting is limited, but there are workable options. The best no-cost long-term option is usually an Oracle Cloud Always Free VM, where you install Docker, run the official Gotenberg image, and expose it behind Nginx or Caddy with HTTPS. Easier platforms like Fly.io or Render may be simpler to deploy to, but their free tiers can change, sleep, or disappear, so they are convenient for testing and small usage rather than something you should fully depend on. A basic deployment flow looks like this: create a small server or app host, run the official Gotenberg Docker image, open only the needed port internally, and put a reverse proxy in front of it so your public endpoint is something like pdf.yourdomain.com. Then point your DNS for that subdomain to the host. If you use Caddy or Nginx, you can terminate TLS and also add basic protections like request size limits and IP restrictions. From your main website, do not call Gotenberg straight from frontend JavaScript if you can avoid it. Instead, send the file from your site to your own backend endpoint, and have your backend call Gotenberg. That gives you better security, avoids CORS headaches, lets you enforce authentication and rate limits, and keeps your Gotenberg server from being abused by random internet traffic. Your website backend can then stream the generated PDF back to the user. This matters because file-to-PDF conversion can be resource-heavy. Gotenberg uses Chromium and LibreOffice-based conversions, so memory and CPU can spike. Many “free” platforms have strict RAM limits, sleeping instances, or request timeouts, which can make conversions fail on large or complex files. If your use case is light, such as occasional HTML-to-PDF or small document conversions, a free host may be enough. If you expect regular usage, you will probably outgrow free hosting quickly. If you want the simplest realistic free route, use an Oracle Cloud free VM with Docker Compose. Run Gotenberg there, put Caddy in front for automatic HTTPS, and create a backend route on your main website that forwards documents to the Gotenberg API. Your app would call something like yourdomain.com/api/convert, and your backend would POST to http://gotenberg:3000/forms/libreoffice/convert or the relevant Gotenberg endpoint depending on the conversion type. So the answer is: yes, you can host Gotenberg for free, but the best pattern is free Docker-capable hosting plus a subdomain and a backend proxy from your main website. That is cheaper, safer, and more reliable than trying to expose Gotenberg directly to the browser.

Claude Opus 4

Answer: You can host Gotenberg for free by deploying its Docker container on a free-tier cloud platform like Render, Fly.io, or Railway, then calling its API endpoints from your main website to convert files to PDF.

Here's a practical breakdown of how to do this: **Option 1: Fly.io (Recommended)** Fly.io offers a free tier with enough resources to run Gotenberg. Steps: 1. Install the Fly CLI (`flyctl`) 2. Create a `fly.toml` config file pointing to the `gotenberg/gotenberg` Docker image 3. Run `fly launch` and `fly deploy` 4. You'll get a public URL like `https://your-app.fly.dev` 5. Call it from your website: `POST https://your-app.fly.dev/forms/chromium/convert/url` (or other endpoints) **Option 2: Render.com** Render has a free tier for web services. Create a new Web Service, select "Docker" as the environment, point it to the `gotenberg/gotenberg:8` image, and deploy. You'll get a `.onrender.com` URL. Note: free tier services spin down after inactivity, so there may be cold start delays of ~30-60 seconds. **Option 3: Railway.app** Railway gives you $5 of free credits per month. Deploy the Gotenberg Docker image directly, and you'll get a public URL. This is probably the easiest setup — just create a project, add a service from Docker image `gotenberg/gotenberg:8`, and expose port 3000. **Calling Gotenberg from your website:** From your backend (Node.js, Python, PHP, etc.), make HTTP POST requests to Gotenberg's API. Example with curl: ``` curl --request POST \ --url https://your-gotenberg-instance.fly.dev/forms/chromium/convert/html \ --form files=@index.html \ --output result.pdf ``` Or for converting files like DOCX to PDF, use the LibreOffice endpoint: ``` curl --request POST \ --url https://your-gotenberg-instance.fly.dev/forms/libreoffice/convert \ --form files=@document.docx \ --output result.pdf ``` **Important caveats:** - Gotenberg is resource-hungry (especially LibreOffice conversions), so free tiers may be tight on RAM. You might need at least 512MB-1GB RAM. - Free tiers often have cold starts — your first request after idle time will be slow. - Don't expose your Gotenberg instance without some form of authentication or rate limiting, or someone else could abuse it. Consider adding an API key check via a reverse proxy or middleware, or at minimum restrict CORS. - Fly.io's free tier gives you 3 shared-CPU VMs with 256MB RAM each — you may need to bump the RAM which could cost a small amount. Railway's $5 credit is generous enough for light usage. **Pro tip:** If you're using Node.js, there's an official `@gotenberg/client` npm package that makes the API calls cleaner. Similar client libraries exist for other languages.

Gemini 3.1 Pro

Answer: You can host Gotenberg for free by deploying its Docker image on a service like Render for quick setups or an Oracle Cloud 'Always Free' VPS for high-memory processing, and then interacting with it via backend POST requests from your main website.

Gotenberg is distributed exclusively as a Docker container, meaning you need a hosting provider that supports containerized environments. For a frictionless, zero-maintenance setup, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) providers like Render or Koyeb allow you to deploy the official Gotenberg Docker image directly from Docker Hub on their free tiers. However, there is a significant caveat to standard free PaaS tiers: Gotenberg uses headless Chromium and LibreOffice to process files, which can be highly memory-intensive. Free tiers typically restrict you to 512MB of RAM and spin down your instance after a period of inactivity. This leads to slow 'cold starts' when a user requests a PDF, and potential out-of-memory crashes if you are converting large or complex documents. For a truly robust, production-grade free solution, Oracle Cloud's 'Always Free' tier is unmatched. It provides an ARM-based Virtual Private Server (VPS) with up to 24GB of RAM and 4 vCPUs. Because Gotenberg officially supports ARM architectures, you can install Docker on this free instance, run the container with abundant memory, and keep it active 24/7 without worrying about sleep cycles or document size limits. Once your Gotenberg instance is running, you can call it from your main website's backend by sending multipart/form-data POST requests (containing your HTML, Markdown, or Office files) to your Gotenberg URL. It is highly recommended to place Gotenberg behind a reverse proxy like Caddy or Nginx on your server to add simple API key authentication, ensuring random internet users cannot abuse your free PDF generation engine.

Final Summary

The AI Roundtable reached a consensus that self-hosting the official Docker image on Oracle Cloud’s 'Always Free' tier is the most robust no-cost solution. While Claude Opus 4 and Gemini 3.1 Pro also suggested easier platforms like Render or Fly.io, GPT-5.4 and Grok 4.20 warned that these services often lack the RAM required for Gotenberg’s resource-heavy PDF conversions. The group collectively advised against calling the API directly from the frontend to avoid security risks and CORS issues.

All 4 models agreed