Document generation tools charge in one of six ways. Some bill for each document, some for each person who uses the tool, and most sell a monthly allowance of documents or credits. The model matters more than the headline price, because it decides what makes the bill grow: more documents, more people, or neither. This page sorts the 128 tools in our records by pricing model. Prices were checked on 20 Oct 2026 and are the cheapest paid plan, using the annual-billed figure where a vendor publishes both.
The models at a glance
| Model | Tools | Example | Starting price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Usage tiers | 40 | CraftMyPDF | $29 a month for 1,200 PDFs |
| Per seat | 31 | Templafy | $40 a user a month |
| Enterprise | 20 | jsreport | $395 a year per instance |
| Flat monthly | 17 | Docmosis | $49 a month |
| Unknown | 10 | Slideform | not published |
| Free | 8 | Gotenberg | free, MIT license |
| Per document | 2 | doqs.dev | EUR 0.08 a document |
Usage tiers
Forty tools sell a monthly allowance. You pick the tier that covers your volume and move up when you outgrow it. The allowance is counted in documents, credits or deliveries, and the price per document falls as the tier rises.
- CraftMyPDF starts from $29 a month for 1,200 PDFs, about 2.4 cents each.
- Docupilot starts from $29 a month for 100 documents, 29 cents each.
- DocRaptor starts from $15 a month for 125 documents, 12 cents each.
- PDFBolt starts from $19 a month for 2,000 documents, under 1 cent each.
The same $29 buys 12 times as many documents on one tool as on another. Compare the allowance, then the price.
Per seat
Thirty-one tools charge for each user. The bill grows with the team and stays the same however many documents it makes. That suits a small team that generates a lot, and it penalizes a large team that generates a little.
- Templafy starts from $40 a user a month on its Team plan, up to 25 seats.
- Airtable Page Designer comes with the Airtable Team seat, from $20 a user a month.
- Documill starts from EUR 20 a user a month, about $22.
- Apsona starts from $125 a builder a month with a three-builder minimum, so the real floor is $375 a month.
Eight of the per-seat records are adjacent products, mostly proposal and e-sign suites, such as PandaDoc from $19 a seat and Qwilr from $35 a user. This site lists them after the rest.
Flat monthly
Seventeen tools charge one price for the account, sometimes with a cap on documents or users.
- Formstack Documents starts from $250 a month on its Suite plan, billed annually, with 250 deliveries a month.
- Docmosis starts from $49 a month for its cloud Professional plan, which covers 4,000 pages or more.
- Gavel starts from $83 a month with unlimited generations and caps on sessions.
- Knackly starts from $209 a month billed yearly, for four users.
Per document
Only two tools in our records bill purely by the document. doqs.dev charges EUR 0.08 a document on Starter, or EUR 25 a month on Scale. Api2Pdf charges a $1 monthly base plus bandwidth and compute. Anvil is filed under usage tiers, but it meters $0.10 a PDF after 2,500 free credits.
Enterprise and unknown
Twenty tools sell by quote. Eleven of them are Salesforce or legal and contract products, such as S-Docs and HotDocs, which publish no price. A few developer products sell licenses instead of plans: jsreport at $395 a year for a single instance, Aspose.Words at $1,679 for a perpetual small business license, and docxtemplater with paid modules from EUR 500 a year. Ten more records have no price we could confirm, often because the pricing page did not load.
Free
Eight tools are free outright. Most are open source, such as Gotenberg, WeasyPrint and docassemble, or free Google Sheets add-ons such as Autocrat. Free here means no license fee. Hosting and upkeep for a self-hosted engine are yours. Across all models, 66 tools have a free plan or tier.
Break-even sums
Per document against a tier. doqs.dev charges EUR 0.08 a document or EUR 25 a month. EUR 25 divided by EUR 0.08 is 312.5, so from 313 documents a month the Scale plan costs less.
Metered against a tier. At $0.10 a PDF, $29 covers 290 PDFs. CraftMyPDF’s $29 tier covers 1,200. Above 290 a month, the tier is cheaper.
Per seat against flat. At $40 a user, six people cost $240 a month and seven cost $280. Formstack Documents costs $250 a month whatever the headcount. The flat plan wins from the seventh user, as long as 250 deliveries a month is enough. The two products differ in what they do; the sum only shows how each bill grows.
Who each model suits
Usage tiers suit teams whose volume is steady and known. Per-seat plans suit a few builders who generate a lot. Flat plans suit a growing team with a predictable document count. Per-document billing suits low or spiky volume. Enterprise quotes are where Salesforce-native and legal tools sit, so budget for a sales call. Free and open source engines suit developers who can host them.