Application hosting

Hosting Gotenberg

A document-conversion API for generating PDFs and screenshots or converting office files. It belongs behind the application, with conversion capacity planned around document complexity and concurrent jobs.

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Understand the setup

Check runtime, storage and installation requirements before choosing a server.

See requirements

Budget your resources

Allow room for the operating system, database and your actual workload.

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See the cheapest plans that meet the starting size, then check each provider's page.

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Must have

Installation requirements

A compatible container environment for the chosen official image.
Private network access between the application and conversion API.

Recommended

Planning guidance

Use the resource planner to size a server for your workload.

No official hardware minimum for Gotenberg

The Kubernetes instructions specify at least 512 MiB memory and 0.2 CPU; Cloud Run guidance recommends at least 1 GiB. These are deployment-specific allocations, not throughput guarantees. Complex files and concurrent jobs need additional evaluation.

Deploy with

Supported paths

Docker
Docker Compose
Kubernetes
Documented Cloud Run image

The host must provide

Runtime

Conversion engines: Chromium, LibreOffice and PDF engines depend on the chosen image variant

Storage

Persistent data

Plan temporary disk space for uploads and generated documents. Store outputs in the application storage system when they need to outlive a request; a conversion container is not an archive.

Step by step

Plan a Gotenberg deployment

Choose the image

Use the full image for browser and office conversions, or choose the Chromium-only or LibreOffice-only variant for the required formats.
Official instructions
Keep the API private

Use an internal container network or bind the host port to localhost. Do not expose the conversion service directly to the internet.
Official instructions
Set workload limits

Configure queue, timeout and concurrency limits, then check the largest expected documents before sizing more instances.
Official instructions

Security

Before you go public

Restrict outbound URLs used for document downloads and rendering.
Keep conversion endpoints behind application authorization and network controls.

Cost

Beyond the server price

Include temporary storage and retained output files.
Cloud billing and additional instances depend on job duration and request volume.

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