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PDFShift PDF Output Has Broken Fonts: Troubleshooting Guide

PDFShift font problems often come down to external fonts loading after conversion starts. Check delivery, CSS face declarations, readiness, and separate header/footer requirements.

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If PDFShift PDFs show missing, substituted, or inconsistent fonts, start by checking whether the font has finished loading before conversion begins. PDFShift warns that externally fetched fonts can load intermittently; a locally hosted font or embedded base64 font data is often a more consistent option. Then verify the CSS face and family, wait for font readiness when needed, and handle header and footer fonts separately.

1. Confirm PDFShift can access the font

PDFShift supports custom fonts declared with @font-face and supplied through the request’s css parameter. If the declaration points to a remote font, check that the URL is reachable from PDFShift’s conversion environment and that it serves the intended font file.

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The timing of an external font request is a particular risk: PDFShift says the font may not have loaded by the time conversion starts. Its Help Center describes the resulting behavior as intermittent. For more consistent loading, PDFShift recommends using a locally hosted font URL or base64-encoded font data where feasible.

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@font-face {
  font-family: "Brand Sans";
  src: url("https://example.com/fonts/brand-sans.woff2") format("woff2");
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: normal;
}

body {
  font-family: "Brand Sans", sans-serif;
}

This is a CSS example, not a complete PDFShift request. Replace the example URL and family with your own font details, then pass the stylesheet through the request’s css parameter. PDFShift’s Node guide says css accepts either a CSS string or a URL and applies it to the converted page: Loading CSS from a string in Node with Bent.

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Choosing a delivery method

  • External font URL: Convenient to update, but PDFShift warns that loading may be intermittent. Check reachability and wait for readiness if you must fetch the font remotely.
  • Locally hosted font URL: PDFShift identifies this as a more consistent option. Confirm the conversion environment can access the file.
  • Base64 font data: Also identified by PDFShift as a more consistent option, and necessary for its documented header/footer approach. Embedding adds font data to your CSS or document, so account for that operational overhead.

The right choice depends on your deployment, document size, and font licensing. Ensure you have the rights to embed and distribute the font in the form you choose.

2. Check the CSS face, family, weight, and style

Compare the font-family name declared in @font-face with the family assigned to the elements that should use it. Check that the supplied file matches the requested weight and style: a regular face does not automatically provide the intended bold or italic face.

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  • Verify the font URL or embedded data corresponds to the face declaration.
  • Declare the applicable font-weight and font-style for each supplied face.
  • Apply the family to the document elements that need it, and check for later CSS rules that override it.
  • When debugging, avoid a global !important rule unless you deliberately want to override all other typography.

PDFShift’s custom-font example demonstrates using the request’s CSS parameter to declare the font and assign it to page elements: Custom Fonts in PDFShift.

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3. Wait for asynchronous font loading

If the font must be fetched asynchronously, configure PDFShift’s wait_for parameter to poll a global function until it returns a truthy value. PDFShift’s example waits for the browser’s document.fonts.ready promise to resolve, then exposes a function that reports readiness.

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<script>
  window.pdfFontsReady = false;

  document.fonts.ready.then(() => {
    window.pdfFontsReady = true;
  });

  window.areFontsReady = function () {
    return window.pdfFontsReady;
  };
</script>

Configure wait_for to call areFontsReady using the syntax required by your PDFShift request. The snippet illustrates the page-side readiness flag; it does not specify the request’s parameter encoding. PDFShift’s guide explains the polling mechanism: How to wait on an element before continuing the conversion.

Waiting is bounded by the remaining conversion timeout. The cited help article lists 30 seconds for free accounts and 100 seconds for premium accounts at the time represented by that documentation; account limits can change, so check the current plan documentation before relying on those values.

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4. Treat header and footer fonts separately

PDFShift documents header and footer content as separate from the main page content and says those regions cannot make network requests. A font URL that works in the document body therefore may not be available to header or footer content.

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  1. Base64-encode the font data.
  2. Include the encoded font in both the main document and the header/footer content.
  3. Use the font in the main body as well, so PDFShift includes it in the generated PDF.

PDFShift reports successful tests with TTF and WOFF2 files. That is the vendor’s reported result, not an independently reproduced test. See Adding custom fonts in headers and footers.

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5. If the font is still wrong

The documented steps address delivery, readiness, and header/footer constraints; they do not account for every possible font defect. Before changing unrelated layout settings, narrow down the failure:

  • Check whether the font file contains the glyphs your text needs, including any non-Latin characters or symbols.
  • Confirm that the requested weight and style actually exist in the supplied font files.
  • Compare the exact source HTML and CSS sent to PDFShift with the resulting PDF, including the CSS request parameter and the font URL or embedded declaration.
  • If the issue remains reproducible, send PDFShift support a minimal reproduction containing those inputs and the generated PDF.

Or skip the browser setup

ScreenshotNeo is a website screenshot API, not a PDFShift font fix or a PDF-generation replacement. If you also need a visual image of a page for comparison while debugging, one GET request can return a screenshot. Its capture removes cookie banners, newsletter popups, and chat widgets before the shot; bot checks, blank pages, and failed loads are never billed; and its MCP server lets AI agents take screenshots. The free plan includes 1,000 screenshots a month with no card, and paid plans start at $5 for 3,000. Learn more at ScreenshotNeo.

curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://stripe.com -o shot.webp

See the ScreenshotNeo API documentation, then sign up for the free plan.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Does the ScreenshotNeo call generate a PDF?

No. The example returns a website screenshot image; it is not a PDFShift conversion request or a way to embed fonts in a PDF.

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