Quickstart Guide

Get up and running with pdftheory API in minutes. This guide will walk you through obtaining your API key and making your first request.

Get your API Key

Before you can make requests, you'll need an API key. Head over to the developer dashboard to generate your first key.

Make your first request

The simplest way to test your integration is using curl to compress a PDF. Replace YOUR_API_KEY with the key you generated in the previous step.

Terminal

curl -X POST https://api.pdftheory.com/v1/compress \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -F "file=@/path/to/document.pdf" \
  --output compressed_document.pdf

Explore the Reference

Now that you've successfully processed your first PDF, explore our other powerful endpoints designed for merging, splitting, and securing your documents.

API Reference

Full endpoint details

Usage Limits

Rate limits and quotas

Pro Tip: Use our SDKs

While raw REST requests work great, our official SDKs handle buffering, error retries, and type safety out of the box.

npm i @pdftheory/nodepip install pdftheory

Introduction

API Keys