📊 Document Converter Performance Benchmark

Comprehensive performance comparison of popular free document conversion tools

A detailed performance benchmark comparing the most popular free and open-source document conversion solutions: Carbone, Collabora, Jod-converter, and Gotenberg. This repository provides real-world performance metrics, helping you choose the right tool for your document conversion needs.

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🎯 Quick Results

Performance Summary

Tool	Threads	Conversion	Avg Latency	Throughput (RPS)
Carbone	4 (chrome)	HTML → PDF	8.66ms	567.92
Carbone	4 (libreoffice)	DOCX → PDF	15.49ms	320.57
Carbone	1 (chrome)	HTML → PDF	22.62ms	218.83
Carbone	1 (libreoffice)	DOCX → PDF	41.44ms	120.17
Collabora	1 (libreoffice)	DOCX → PDF	68.17ms	72.93
Collabora	4 (libreoffice)	DOCX → PDF	70.52ms	70.55
Jod-converter	4 (libreoffice)	DOCX → PDF	92.58ms	53.84
Gotenberg	1 (chrome)	HTML → PDF	132.07ms	37.80
Gotenberg	4 (chrome)	HTML → PDF	138.16ms	36.12
Jod-converter	1 (libreoffice)	DOCX → PDF	305.42ms	16.15
Gotenberg	1 (libreoffice)	DOCX → PDF	650.00ms	7.66

💡 Key Finding: Carbone consistently outperforms other solutions, especially with multi-threading enabled, achieving up to 567.92 RPS for HTML to PDF conversions.

⚡ Performance Note: Carbone could potentially be even faster, as it performs additional parsing to detect Carbone tags within documents in addition to the conversion process. This means Carbone is doing more work (template parsing + conversion) while still achieving the best performance.

Gotenberg does not support multi-threading for LibreOffice

📈 Key Insights

• ⚡ Fastest Overall: Carbone with 4 threads (8.66ms avg for HTML→PDF)
• 🚀 Best Scalability: Carbone shows significant performance gains with multi-threading
• 📄 DOCX Conversion: Carbone leads with 15.49ms (4 threads) vs 70.52ms (Collabora)
• 🌐 HTML Conversion: Carbone dominates with 8.66ms vs 132.07ms (Gotenberg)

🛠️ Tools Tested

Tool	Version	Description
Carbone Community Edition	5.8.0	Document generation/conversion engine
Collabora	Latest	LibreOffice-based document server
Jod-converter	Latest	Java-based document converter
Gotenberg	8.33.0	Docker-powered document conversion API

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🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Docker installed and running
• k6 for load testing

Install k6

# macOS
brew install k6

# Linux (not tested)
sudo gpg -k
sudo gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring /usr/share/keyrings/k6-archive-keyring.gpg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys C5AD17C747E3415A3642D57D77C6C491D6AC1D53
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/k6-archive-keyring.gpg] https://dl.k6.io/deb stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/k6.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install k6

# Windows
choco install k6

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📋 Benchmarking Guide

🔴 JOD Converter

1. Start JOD Converter

# Single thread
docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 \
  -v "$PWD/jod/application-1.properties:/etc/app/application.properties:ro" \
  ghcr.io/jodconverter/jodconverter-examples:rest

# Multi-thread (4 threads)
docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 \
  -v "$PWD/jod/application-4.properties:/etc/app/application.properties:ro" \
  ghcr.io/jodconverter/jodconverter-examples:rest

2. Verify Conversion

curl -v \
  -F "data=@./sample.docx" \
  http://localhost:8080/lool/convert-to/pdf \
  --output outputJod.pdf

3. Run Benchmark

k6 run jod-converter.js

🟠 Collabora Converter

1. Start Collabora

# Single thread
docker rm -f collabora
docker run -d --name collabora --privileged -t \
  -p 127.0.0.1:9980:9980 \
  -e "extra_params=--o:ssl.enable=false --o:ssl.termination=true --o:per_document.max_concurrency=1 --o:num_prespawn_children=1" \
  collabora/code

# Fix systemplate warning
docker exec -u 0 collabora coolconfig update-system-template

# Multi-thread (4 threads)
docker run -d --name collabora --privileged -t \
  -p 127.0.0.1:9980:9980 \
  -e "extra_params=--o:ssl.enable=false --o:ssl.termination=true --o:per_document.max_concurrency=4 --o:num_prespawn_children=4" \
  collabora/code

⚠️ Note: --privileged flag is required to avoid /usr/bin/coolmount: Operation not permitted errors.

2. Verify Conversion

curl -k \
  -F "data=@./sample.docx" \
  http://localhost:9980/cool/convert-to/pdf \
  --output outputCollabora.pdf

3. Run Benchmark

k6 run collabora-converter.js

🟣 Carbone Converter

Version: 5.8.0

1. Start Carbone

# Single thread
docker run -t -i --rm -p 4000:4000 \
  carbone/carbone-ee:full-5.8.0 webserver -s -f 1

# Multi-thread (4 threads)
docker run -t -i --rm -p 4000:4000 \
  carbone/carbone-ee:full-5.8.0 webserver -s -f 4

2. Verify Conversion

DOCX to PDF (using LibreOffice):

base64_template=$(base64 < ./sample.docx | tr -d '\r\n')
curl -k \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"data\": {}, \"template\": \"data:application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document;base64,${base64_template}\", \"convertTo\": \"pdf\"}" \
  http://localhost:4000/render/template?download=true \
  --output outputCarbone.pdf

HTML to PDF (using Chrome):

base64_html=$(base64 < ./sample.html | tr -d '\r\n')
curl -k \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"data\": {}, \"converter\":\"C\", \"template\": \"data:text/html;base64,${base64_html}\", \"convertTo\": \"pdf\"}" \
  http://localhost:4000/render/template?download=true \
  --output outputCarboneHTML.pdf

3. Run Benchmark

# DOCX to PDF conversion
k6 run carbone-converter.js

# HTML to PDF conversion
k6 run carbone-converter-html.js

🔵 Gotenberg Converter

Version: 8.33.0

1. Start Gotenberg

# Single thread
docker run --rm -p 4000:3000 \
  gotenberg/gotenberg:8.33.0 \
  gotenberg \
  --chromium-auto-start=true

# Multi-thread (4 concurrency)
docker run --rm -p 4000:3000 \
  gotenberg/gotenberg:8.33.0 \
  gotenberg \
  --chromium-max-concurrency=4 \
  --chromium-auto-start=true

2. Verify Conversion

# HTML to PDF
curl -v \
  -X POST "http://localhost:4000/forms/chromium/convert/html" \
  -F "files=@./sample.html;filename=index.html" \
  -o outputGotenberg.pdf

# DOCX to PDF
curl -v \
  -X POST "http://localhost:4000/forms/libreoffice/convert" \
  -F "files=@./sample.docx;filename=sample.docx" \
  -o outputGotenbergDOCX.pdf

3. Run Benchmark

# HTML to PDF
k6 run gotenberg-converter-html.js

# DOCX to PDF
k6 run gotenberg-converter.js

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📊 Benchmark Methodology

Test Environment

Hardware Specifications:

• Device: MacBook Pro with M4 Max
• CPU: Apple M4 Max chip
• Architecture: ARM64 (Apple Silicon)
• Container Runtime: Docker Desktop

Software Versions:

• Benchmark Date: June 11th, 2026
• Docker Images: Latest available versions as of the benchmark date
  • Carbone Community Edition (Free Edition): carbone/carbone-ee:full-5.8.0
  • Collabora: collabora/code
  • Jod-converter: ghcr.io/jodconverter/jodconverter-examples:rest
  • Gotenberg: gotenberg/gotenberg:8.33.0 (--chromium-max-concurrency=4, --chromium-auto-start=true)

Test Configuration

• Load Testing Tool: k6 by Grafana Labs
• Test Duration: 60 seconds per configuration
• Virtual Users: 5 concurrent users
• Metrics Collected:
  • Average latency (ms)
  • Requests per second (RPS)
  • 95th percentile latency
  • Error rates

⚠️ Note: All benchmarks were run using Docker containers on macOS. Performance may vary on different hardware configurations and operating systems.

For detailed results, see RESULT.md.

📝 Sample Files

This repository includes sample files for testing:

• sample.docx - Sample Word document
• sample.html - Sample HTML file

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you'd like to:

• Add more document converters to the benchmark
• Improve the testing methodology
• Fix issues or improve documentation

Please feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.

🙏 Acknowledgments

• k6 - Load testing tool
• All the open-source document converter projects tested

⭐ Star History

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Made with ❤️ for the open-source community