Tell me more about self-hosting Gotenberg or LibreOffice. I am using node.js & ejs. Is there no way I can host Gotenberg or LibreOffice, elsewhere and be Referencing it via an api in my production build?

GPT-5.4

Vote: Yes

Yes. You can absolutely self-host Gotenberg or a LibreOffice-based conversion service on a separate server and call it from your Node.js production app over HTTP/API. This is a very common architecture: your Node.js + EJS app renders HTML or prepares documents, then sends the file or HTML to a remote document/PDF service for conversion. Gotenberg is especially designed for this. It runs as a standalone service, usually in Docker, and exposes an HTTP API. Your production build does not need LibreOffice installed locally if it can reach the hosted Gotenberg instance. LibreOffice itself is not typically used directly as a public API out of the box, but you can host a wrapper service around it, or use Gotenberg since it already bundles document conversion capabilities behind an API. So the answer is yes: host it elsewhere, secure the endpoint, and reference it from your production Node.js app via API calls.

Grok 4.20

Vote: No

The question asks 'Is there no way' to host Gotenberg or LibreOffice elsewhere and reference it via API from a Node.js production build. This is possible, so the answer is No. Gotenberg is built for self-hosting as a Docker container that provides a simple HTTP API for converting documents (including HTML from EJS templates) to PDF. Deploy it on a separate server, VPS, or Kubernetes cluster and call its endpoint from your Node.js app using libraries like axios. LibreOffice can also be installed on a Linux server and automated via its CLI or UNO API, though Gotenberg is the easier, more reliable wrapper for production use. Your Node.js/EJS setup can generate content and send it to the remote service without issues.

Claude Opus 4

Vote: Yes

Yes, you can absolutely host Gotenberg or LibreOffice elsewhere and reference it via an API in your production build. **Gotenberg** is specifically designed for this use case. It is a Docker-based API service that wraps LibreOffice, Chromium, and other tools behind a simple HTTP API. You can deploy it on any server, cloud VM, or container orchestration platform (like AWS ECS, Google Cloud Run, DigitalOcean, etc.) and then call its REST API endpoints from your Node.js/EJS application using standard HTTP requests (e.g., via `axios`, `node-fetch`, or the official `gotenberg-js-client` package). **LibreOffice** can also be hosted remotely. You can set up a server running LibreOffice in headless mode and expose it through a custom API wrapper, or use services like Collabora Online (which is based on LibreOffice) that provide API access. From your Node.js application, you would simply make HTTP POST requests to the remote Gotenberg instance (e.g., `https://your-gotenberg-server:3000/forms/chromium/convert/html`) with your HTML/EJS-rendered content, and it would return the converted PDF or document. There is no requirement for Gotenberg or LibreOffice to be on the same server as your Node.js app. This is actually the recommended architecture for production — separating your document conversion service from your application server improves scalability and resource management.

Gemini 3.1 Pro

Vote: Yes

Yes, you absolutely can! In fact, hosting Gotenberg elsewhere and referencing it via an API is exactly how it is designed to be used. Gotenberg is a stateless, Docker-based API for PDF generation that acts as a wrapper around tools like LibreOffice and Chromium. Because it functions as a standalone microservice, you can deploy the Gotenberg Docker container on any separate hosting provider (like AWS, DigitalOcean, Google Cloud Run, or Railway). In your Node.js production build, you simply make HTTP POST requests to your hosted Gotenberg API endpoint. You can render your EJS templates into HTML strings within your Node app, and then send that HTML directly to Gotenberg's API, which will return the generated PDF.

Final Summary

The AI Roundtable reached a technical consensus while falling into a classic linguistic trap, resulting in a 3-1 split. While Claude Opus 4, Gemini 3.1 Pro, and GPT-5.4 all voted 'Yes' to confirm that remote hosting is possible, Grok 4.20 stood alone with a 'No'—not because it disagreed with the others, but because it took the user's negative phrasing ('Is there no way?') literally, answering that there is indeed a way.

No agreement after 1 rounds of discussion. Final vote: Yes: 3, No: 1

Strongest Arguments

• Yes: Gotenberg is a stateless, Docker-based microservice specifically designed to be called remotely via HTTP, making separate hosting the recommended architecture for production scalability.
• No: Since self-hosting Gotenberg as a remote Docker container and calling it via an API is entirely possible, the literal answer to the question 'Is there no way?' is No.