Cost-Effective Markdown to PDF API

Cost-Effective Markdown to PDF API | Generated by AI

Home 2025.10

Recommended Cheap Option: Google Cloud Run

For a simple Java-based API that converts Markdown to PDF (e.g., using a library like Flying Saucer or iText), with only ~100 requests per week for personal blog use, Google Cloud Run is the most cost-effective choice. It’s a serverless platform that runs containerized apps, scales to zero when idle, and only charges for actual usage. No need to manage VMs or worry about always-on costs—perfect for low-traffic scenarios like yours.

Why Cloud Run Over Other Options?

Vs. Compute Engine (VMs): VMs have fixed hourly costs even when idle, which would be overkill and more expensive (~$5–10/month minimum for a tiny instance).
Vs. App Engine: Similar serverless benefits, but Cloud Run is more flexible for Java containers and often cheaper for sporadic use.
Your workload fits entirely within the free tier, so expect $0/month in practice.

Estimated Costs

With 100 requests/week (~400/month):

Assume each request uses 1 vCPU and 0.5 GiB memory for 10 seconds (conservative for a quick Markdown-to-PDF conversion).
Total usage: ~4,000 vCPU-seconds and ~2,000 GiB-seconds/month.
Free tier covers it all: 180,000 vCPU-seconds, 360,000 GiB-seconds, and 2 million requests per month (in most regions).
If you exceed (unlikely), paid rates are ~$0.000024/vCPU-second + $0.0000025/GiB-second + $0.40/million requests after free limits—still under $0.10/month.

No egress fees for your use case (internal API calls stay free within the same region).

Recommended Region: us-central1 (Iowa)

This is the cheapest Tier 1 region for Cloud Run, with the lowest rates for compute and no premium for latency in North America.
Pricing is similar across Tier 1 regions (US/Europe), but us-central1 edges out on average instance costs.
If you’re outside North America (e.g., Europe or Asia), switch to the closest Tier 1 region like europe-west1 (Belgium) for better latency—costs differ by <10%.
Avoid Tier 2 regions (e.g., asia-southeast1) as they’re 20–50% more expensive.

Quick Setup Guide for Your Java Server

Build your app: Use Spring Boot for a simple REST API. Endpoint example: POST /convert with Markdown body, return PDF.

Add dependency: implementation 'org.xhtmlrenderer:flying-saucer-pdf:9.1.22' (or similar).

Sample code snippet:

@RestController
public class MarkdownController {
    @PostMapping("/convert")
    public ResponseEntity<byte[]> convert(@RequestBody String markdown) {
        // Convert logic here (e.g., markdown to HTML, then to PDF)
        byte[] pdfBytes = // your conversion result;
        return ResponseEntity.ok()
            .header("Content-Type", "application/pdf")
            .body(pdfBytes);
    }
}

Containerize: Create a Dockerfile:

FROM openjdk:17-jdk-slim
COPY target/your-app.jar app.jar
ENTRYPOINT ["java", "-jar", "/app.jar"]

Build: docker build -t gcr.io/your-project/markdown-api .

Deploy to Cloud Run:
- Enable Cloud Run API in GCP Console.
- gcloud run deploy markdown-api --image gcr.io/your-project/markdown-api --platform managed --region us-central1 --allow-unauthenticated --memory 512Mi --cpu 1 --max-instances 1
- Get the URL: https://markdown-api-abc.run.app/convert
Test: Send a Markdown POST request; it auto-scales.

Cloud Run Pricing
GCP Regions Guide
Cloud Run Quickstart ```

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