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EPUB to PDF

Convert EPUB ebooks into PDFs you can print.

Paper size
Orientation

Reflowable layouts and embedded images come through; complex CSS (drop caps, columns, fixed-layout EPUBs) may simplify.
Processed on your device. We never see your files.

How to use EPUB to PDF

What is an EPUB?

EPUB (Electronic Publication) is the standard, open ebook format maintained by the W3C. Under the hood, an .epub file is a zip archive containing one XHTML file per chapter, a stylesheet, images, fonts, and a manifest (content.opf) that lists everything and declares the reading order. Because chapters are XHTML, the text inside an EPUB is structured, marked-up content — headings, paragraphs, lists, blockquotes — not just a flat stream of characters. EPUB 2 and EPUB 3 are both common; EPUB 3 adds features like embedded fonts, MathML and audio, but the basic shape of “zip of XHTML chapters” stays the same.

What is a PDF?

A PDF (Portable Document Format) is a fixed-layout document file created by Adobe in 1993 and now an open ISO standard. Where EPUB flows its text to fit any screen, a PDF pins every glyph to an exact position on an exact-sized page. That makes PDF the right format for printing, archiving, or sending to someone who needs the book to look the same on every device — including devices without an ebook reader installed.

Why convert EPUB to PDF?

The most common reason is printing. Most home printers and print-on-demand services accept PDFs but not EPUBs. If you want to print a public-domain novel, a self-published draft for proof-reading, a course textbook, or a reference work to keep on your desk, the practical workflow is EPUB to PDF, then print.

The next reason is fixed-page sharing. EPUB pagination depends on the reader’s font size — citation by “page 47” only makes sense in PDF, where pages are real. Academic readers, peer reviewers, beta readers and editors usually prefer PDFs so that comments, highlights and page references stay stable.

The third reason is compatibility. Not every device has an EPUB reader pre-installed — most browsers can open a PDF natively but need a plugin or app for EPUB. If you are sending a book to someone whose setup you do not know, PDF is the safer default.

How to use this EPUB to PDF converter

  1. Drop an .epub file onto the dropzone, or click to browse for one. The file is read locally — only the bytes you provide enter the page’s memory.
  2. Pick a paper size — A4 for most of the world, US Letter for North America, or US Legal if you want extra space per page.
  3. Pick an orientation — portrait reads more naturally for prose ebooks.
  4. Optionally edit the filename, then click Convert to PDF.
  5. The converter unzips the EPUB with JSZip, walks the book’s spine in order, renders each chapter through html2canvas, and stitches the canvases together with pdf-lib. The PDF downloads when finished.

Quality tips for EPUB to PDF

For a text-heavy novel, A4 portrait at the default font size is the right choice — the result reads like a paperback. For an illustrated or technical book with large diagrams, switch to landscape so the figures have room.

If the source EPUB has a fancy stylesheet (drop caps, custom fonts, decorative chapter openers), most of the styling will survive because html2canvas paints the chapter’s actual rendered HTML. Custom embedded fonts that the EPUB itself shipped will be honoured by the browser before rendering.

Very long books take longer to convert — html2canvas is CPU-bound. A 400-page novel typically completes in well under a minute on a modern laptop; on an older phone it may be slower. The progress indicator updates per chapter so you can see forward motion.

Privacy

Your ebook never leaves your browser tab. JSZip, html2canvas and pdf-lib are JavaScript libraries fetched once from this site and then cached. The conversion runs locally on your CPU. There is no upload, no server processing, and no logging of which book you converted. You can verify this in the Network panel of your browser’s developer tools, or simply switch off Wi-Fi after the page has loaded.

Browser and reader compatibility

The output is a standard PDF 1.7 file with chapter text rendered into the document at the resolution you picked. It opens identically in Adobe Acrobat, Apple Preview, the built-in PDF viewers in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, and on iOS and Android. The chapter text is rendered as part of each page image, which means the file is larger than a pure-text PDF but visually matches the EPUB you started from.

Frequently asked questions

Can DRM-protected ebooks from Kindle, Kobo or Google Play be converted?
No, and the tool is honest about this. DRM (Digital Rights Management) wraps the chapter files in encryption that only the vendor's app can unlock, and stripping it is both technically out of scope here and illegal in many jurisdictions. If your EPUB came from Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks, your publisher's author copy, a public library's open download, or you exported it yourself from a writing app like Scrivener or Vellum, it is unencrypted and the converter will read it. If the file came wrapped from a major store, the converter will detect the encryption and stop with a clear error.
Does it handle ebooks with lots of images?
Yes, but with a caveat. The converter renders each chapter through html2canvas, which paints the chapter's text and images onto a canvas before pdf-lib places that canvas onto a PDF page. Images embedded in the EPUB's chapter XHTML are pulled out of the zip and inlined as data URLs first, so they appear in the final PDF. Image-heavy chapters (comics, illustrated children's books, photography ebooks) take longer to render and the resulting PDF is larger, but the visual output stays faithful to the source.
What is the difference between reflowable and fixed-layout EPUBs?
Reflowable EPUBs (the vast majority of novels and non-fiction) let the reader's device decide line breaks based on font size and screen width. Fixed-layout EPUBs (common for children's picture books, cookbooks and manga) pin every element to an exact position on a page. This converter handles reflowable EPUBs natively — html2canvas wraps the text to your chosen paper width. Fixed-layout EPUBs will convert, but because their internal pages are sized for a specific device, you may see white space or scaling on the resulting PDF pages.
Will each chapter start on a new page in the PDF?
Yes. EPUBs split their content into one XHTML file per chapter — listed in order in the book's spine — and the converter walks that spine, rendering each file as its own block and inserting a PDF page break between them. So a 20-chapter novel becomes a PDF where each chapter heading lands at the top of a new page. The book's nav or toc.ncx file is also parsed so chapter titles appear correctly in the output, even when filenames are opaque (chap01.xhtml, c2.xhtml, etc.).
Are my ebooks uploaded anywhere?
No. The whole pipeline — JSZip to unpack the EPUB, html2canvas to render each chapter, pdf-lib to assemble the PDF — runs as JavaScript inside your browser tab. The .epub file you drop is read into memory using the FileReader API; nothing is sent to a server. You can confirm this in your browser's Network panel or by disconnecting from the internet after the page has loaded. The converter will still produce your PDF offline.

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