Certificate PDF generation at scale

Generate a certificate with one API call

const cert = await fetch('https://api.pdfs.build/v2/organizations/org_abc/templates/course-certificate/render', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Authorization': `Bearer ${API_KEY}`,
    'Content-Type': 'application/json'
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    data: {
      recipient: 'Sarah Chen',
      course: 'Advanced Data Engineering',
      completion_date: '2025-01-15',
      certificate_id: 'CERT-2025-1042',
      instructor: 'Dr. James Miller'
    }
  })
})

Issuing a thousand at once

Certificates are almost never generated one at a time. A cohort finishes, a course closes, a compliance window ends — and several hundred documents need to exist, each identical in design and different in exactly four fields. The call above is the whole unit of work; issuing in bulk is that call in a loop over your recipient list.

The part that ruins certificates

A certificate is one page with almost nothing on it, which is precisely why it goes wrong: there is nowhere for an unexpectedly long name to hide. Every certificate design is authored against that case rather than against the demo data:

• The recipient's name stays the largest thing on the page. A long name wraps or tightens rather than colliding with the award line beneath it.
• Signatures hold their baseline. Two signatories or three, with titles of different lengths, and the rules still line up across the foot of the page.
• The frame never moves. Borders, seals and crests are fixed page furniture — they do not drift when the text inside them changes length.
• It stays one page. A certificate that reflows onto a second sheet is a broken certificate, so the design refuses to.

Each design's page documents its own behaviour, so you can check it against your longest recipient name before you issue to a cohort.