Carbone vs Prince
Carbone
carbone.ioPrince
princexml.comSide by side
| Figure | Carbone | Prince |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $166.67/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 18 | 5 |
| Spec score · PDF Creation Software | 9.4 (#1) | 7.4 (#28) |
| Audience | Carbone says its customers span finance, healthcare, insurance, legal, public sector, retail, energy, software and telecom. | The maker describes a separate Prince for Books branch aimed at pagination and hyphenation quality requested by book publishers. |
| Headquarters | Bellevigny, France | Melbourne, Australia |
| Integrations | Official connectors cover Airtable, Bubble, Glide, Make, n8n, Ninox, Retool, Zapier, HubSpot, Odoo, Pipedrive, Salesforce, DocuSign and Subnoto. | Maker-provided integration packages include Python and Node.js packages that bundle the engine, plus Java, C#/.NET, and PHP wrappers. |
| Purpose | Carbone merges JSON data into document templates and generates files such as PDF, DOCX, XLSX and PPTX. | Prince converts HTML into PDFs for printing, downloading, and archiving, and typesets HTML content for publishing. |
| Support | The Essential plan includes chat support from 9 AM to 6 PM UTC+2, with asynchronous email responses outside those hours. | Server and Desktop Licenses include 12 months of upgrades and email support, with additional 12-month support contracts available afterward. |
Plans
Carbone
- Cloud FreeFree
- FreeFree
- On-Premise CommunityFree
- On-Premise FreeFree
- Amazon Web Services$0.15, paid once
- Cloud Essential$29 a month
- Essential€29 a month
- Cloud Essential Plus$95 a month
- Essential Plus€95 a month
- Advanced€159 a month
Prince
- Desktop License$495, paid once
- Per Server Academic Discount$1,900, paid once
- Commercial Site License$2,000 a year
- Per Server License$3,800, paid once
- OEM LicensePriced on request
In their own words
Carbone
Carbone merges JSON data into document templates to generate files such as PDF, DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX. Templates can use formats including DOCX, ODT, ODS, XLSX, XML, Markdown, and HTML. Its conversion API handles more than 100 formats and supports LibreOffice, OnlyOffice, and Chromium. API access and bulk generation are listed, with Cloud, On-Premise, Private Cloud, and AWS deployment options. The pricing page lists free Cloud and On-Premise plans, plus a free 30-day trial for self-hosted On-Premise use. Cloud Essential costs $29.00 per month; documents are counted for each 1 MB of injected JSON and images, and additional documents beyond a plan allowance are invoiced separately. Carbone says Cloud stores templates for reuse but does not retain submitted JSON or generated documents beyond what rendering and delivery require. It says it has no access to customer templates, data, or generated documents in on-premise deployments. The service also offers an MCP server and an open-source Carbone Skill for connecting AI assistants and generating templates. Its listed platform options include API, Linux, macOS, self-hosted, web, and Windows.