AccessiblePDF vs Nutrient DWS Accessibility API
AccessiblePDF
accessiblepdf.appNutrient DWS Accessibility API
nutrient.ioSide by side
| Figure | AccessiblePDF | Nutrient DWS Accessibility API |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $50/mo | $79/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 5 |
| Spec score · PDF Accessibility Software | 7.8 (#11) | 8.0 (#8) |
| Security | The maker says processing and storage occur in US regions, with AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit. | Nutrient says its infrastructure is SOC 2 Type 2 audited and GDPR-compliant, and API requests must use HTTPS. |
| Standards | The maker lists WCAG 2.1 AA, PDF/UA-1, ISO 14289-1, Section 508, ADA Title II, EN 301 549 and AODA among standards covered. | The API targets PDF/UA-1 (ISO 14289-1) conformance. |
| Support | The maker says it answers security questionnaires directly and acknowledges vulnerability reports within one business day. | All plans include documentation and developer support, with additional support options depending on plan. |
Plans
AccessiblePDF
- PDF remediation$0.50, paid once
- Manual remediation, standard documents$6, paid once
- Manual remediation, scanned or form-heavy$10, paid once
- PDF Tag Editor$50 a month
- Team plan$225 a month
Nutrient DWS Accessibility API
- FreeFree
- Starter$79 a month
- Professional$249 a month
- Business$499 a month
- CustomPriced on request
In their own words
AccessiblePDF
AccessiblePDF is a web service from Palanisi Labs LLC for remediating PDF files. It tags uploaded PDFs, including scans, runs checks with veraPDF, and returns PDF/UA-1 files. A free compliance check is available before paid remediation. OCR for image-only pages is included in the $0.50, paid once plan, billed at $0.50 per page with no minimums. Results can include a tagged PDF with a PDF/UA identifier, bookmarks, before-and-after validation results, and a plain-English change list; accessible HTML is available on request. The Tag Editor places a live page beside its tag tree for editing reading order, tables, lists, headings, and alt text, with screen-reader preview and revalidation. Other plans cover manual remediation and team use. The service lists WCAG 2.1 AA, PDF/UA-1, Section 508, ADA Title II, EN 301 549, and AODA. Processing uses US regions, AES-256 at rest, and TLS 1.2+ in transit.
Nutrient DWS Accessibility API
Nutrient DWS Accessibility API processes PDFs to add accessibility tags and check conformance. It returns a tagged PDF with PDF/UA metadata and targets PDF/UA-1 (ISO 14289-1). Tagging covers H1–H6 headings, ordered and unordered lists, table rows and cells, reading order, annotations and decorative artifacts. The API accepts HTTP requests from any programming language, with quickstarts for Java, C#, JavaScript, Python and PHP. Nutrient reports 96.5% PDF/UA conformance across a validation corpus of 3,157 files. Its free plan costs nothing and includes 20 auto-tagged pages and 100 validations per month. Starter costs $79 a month for 200 pages and 1,000 validations; Professional is $249 a month for 1,000 pages and 5,000 validations; Business is $499 a month for 3,000 pages and 15,000 validations. Monthly quotas do not roll over, and requests in a quota category are blocked when that quota runs out unless a larger plan or pay-as-you-go is used. Auto-tagging does not guarantee full accessibility compliance, so Nutrient recommends QA, especially for sensitive or high-stakes documents.