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

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");

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.

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"));

• 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.

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).

• 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.

• 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.

I'm the author of FluentPdf and a suite of compile-time source generators (AutoWire, AutoMap.Generator) and 28+ Polly v8 resilience packages. I'm available for consulting on Polly v8 resilience, Azure cloud architecture, and clean .NET design.

→ solidqualitysolutions.com · LinkedIn

🌐 Full suite overview: swevo.github.io

MIT © Justin Bannister