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2. How-Tos
3. Chrome PDF Rendering Engine

Chrome PDF Rendering Engine

ByChaknith Bin

January 25, 2023

Updated  June 1, 2025

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Create high-grade PDF renders utilizing the PDF-rendering engine of Chrome!

Chromium is an open-source web browser project developed and maintained by Google. It serves as the foundation for several popular web browsers, including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, and many others.

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High-Quality Improvements, Well Tested

High-Quality Rendering

The latest “Blink!” HTML rendering. Choose from Chrome Identical rendering or Enhanced Rendering (which we find more accurate and easy to code for than Chrome.)

20% Faster Renders

Provides effortless multithreading and Async, using as many CPU cores as you wish. For SAAS and high-load applications this may be 5-20 times faster, outperforming direct browser usage and web-drivers.

Full Support

Full (and we mean full) support for JavaScript, responsive layout and CSS3.
Azure as a first-class citizen. It just works.
Continued maintenance and improved full support for .NET 8, 7, 6, 5, Core, and Framework 4.6.2+.

Rigorously Tested

The release passed with 1156 green unit & integration tests (and no red ones). We believe this EAP to be as stable as our main release, and has our best minds actively improving it every day.

Section 508 Accessibility Compliance

Produces accessible PDFs using the PDF(UA) tagged PDF standard.

Ongoing Improvements

We would love to hear your feedback. Contact support@ironsoftware.com with ideas or if you need any help getting things running.

Implement in Your Project

1. Install IronPDF

First, you must install IronPDF into your project from the NuGet Package Manager named IronPdf.

# This is just a placeholder for installation. Use the NuGet CLI or Package Manager in your IDE.
nuget install IronPdf

# This is just a placeholder for installation. Use the NuGet CLI or Package Manager in your IDE.
nuget install IronPdf

2. Try the new API

We haven’t broken the previous IronPDF C# and VB.NET API you are already using. It will remain! However, the old style is being superseded by a better one to give you more control.

// Example of setting up RenderingOptions and HttpLoginCredentials in the new API
var renderer = new IronPdf.ChromePdfRenderer();
renderer.RenderingOptions.CssMediaType = IronPdf.Rendering.CssMediaType.Screen;
// Set HTTP credentials if needed
renderer.RenderingOptions.HttpLoginCredentials.Username = "yourUsername";
renderer.RenderingOptions.HttpLoginCredentials.Password = "yourPassword";

// Example of setting up RenderingOptions and HttpLoginCredentials in the new API
var renderer = new IronPdf.ChromePdfRenderer();
renderer.RenderingOptions.CssMediaType = IronPdf.Rendering.CssMediaType.Screen;
// Set HTTP credentials if needed
renderer.RenderingOptions.HttpLoginCredentials.Username = "yourUsername";
renderer.RenderingOptions.HttpLoginCredentials.Password = "yourPassword";

' Example of setting up RenderingOptions and HttpLoginCredentials in the new API

Dim renderer = New IronPdf.ChromePdfRenderer()

renderer.RenderingOptions.CssMediaType = IronPdf.Rendering.CssMediaType.Screen

' Set HTTP credentials if needed

renderer.RenderingOptions.HttpLoginCredentials.Username = "yourUsername"

renderer.RenderingOptions.HttpLoginCredentials.Password = "yourPassword"

3. Apply Pixel-Perfect Chrome Rendering

This example will give you PDFs that are pixel-perfect to the latest Chrome desktop browser’s “print to PDF” functionality.

// Example for rendering a pixel-perfect PDF from HTML
var renderer = new IronPdf.ChromePdfRenderer();
var pdf = renderer.RenderHtmlAsPdf("<h1>Hello World</h1>");
pdf.SaveAs("HelloWorld.pdf");

// Example for rendering a pixel-perfect PDF from HTML
var renderer = new IronPdf.ChromePdfRenderer();
var pdf = renderer.RenderHtmlAsPdf("<h1>Hello World</h1>");
pdf.SaveAs("HelloWorld.pdf");

' Example for rendering a pixel-perfect PDF from HTML

Dim renderer = New IronPdf.ChromePdfRenderer()

Dim pdf = renderer.RenderHtmlAsPdf("<h1>Hello World</h1>")

pdf.SaveAs("HelloWorld.pdf")

Recommended Improvements

We recommend using some Iron-specific improvements.

• Use screen stylesheets to print PDFs. They are less fiddly to develop and more true to existing web assets.
• Responsive layout support.
• Create PDF Forms from your HTML form elements.

// Example showing recommended improvements such as responsive layout
...

// Example showing recommended improvements such as responsive layout
...

' Example showing recommended improvements such as responsive layout

'...

4. Multi-threading and Async Support

Multithreading and Async support for our Chrome rendering engine is in a different league compared to the previous build.

• For enterprise-grade multithreading, use our ChromePdfRenderer in your existing threads and it will work. For web applications, this also takes zero setup.
• For batch processing of HTML to PDF, we recommend using the built-in .NET Parallel.ForEach pattern.
• We love async and have provided Async variants of all of our rendering methods such as ChromePdfRenderer.RenderHtmlAsPdfAsync.

// Example of using async rendering
var renderer = new IronPdf.ChromePdfRenderer();
var task = await renderer.RenderHtmlAsPdfAsync("<h1>Async PDF</h1>");
task.SaveAs("AsyncHelloWorld.pdf");

// Example of using async rendering
var renderer = new IronPdf.ChromePdfRenderer();
var task = await renderer.RenderHtmlAsPdfAsync("<h1>Async PDF</h1>");
task.SaveAs("AsyncHelloWorld.pdf");

' Example of using async rendering

Dim renderer = New IronPdf.ChromePdfRenderer()

Dim task = Await renderer.RenderHtmlAsPdfAsync("<h1>Async PDF</h1>")

task.SaveAs("AsyncHelloWorld.pdf")

5. What is next?

Features Coming Soon

• Ultra-Slim deployments, useful for Azure functions and AWS Lambda. We aim to provide deployment options to produce the smallest possible disk footprint.
• Mobile rendering support: support for iOS and Android app developers.
• IE and Firefox rendering options.
• Multi-server distributed rendering architectures for large enterprise users.
• A re-imagined internal PDF document object model to support the widest range of PDF standards. We want to be able to handle reading and automatically fixing corrupted and badly encoded PDF documents elegantly.
• "{YourIdeaHere}" Feature requests and bug reports our customers go to the top of the stack.

Please Contact Us for Further Queries with any suggestions or questions.

Chaknith Bin

  Chat with engineering team now

Software Engineer

Chaknith works on IronXL and IronBarcode. He has deep expertise in C# and .NET, helping improve the software and support customers. His insights from user interactions contribute to better products, documentation, and overall experience.