fynepdf-pdfa

Turn PDFs into valid PDF/A by fixing them in place, not rebuilding them. The fynepdf-pdfa command line and a Node API, with no Ghostscript. Made by FynePDF for its web and desktop apps.

• Valid: 99.3% of 2,053 test files come out valid PDF/A-2b, checked by veraPDF (Ghostscript: 93.5%, LibreOffice: 96.0%).
• Honest: a file it can't make PDF/A is never labelled PDF/A, and you're told why.
• Keeps the document: text, bookmarks, links, form fields, tags and layers stay as they were.
• Fast: a typical file takes 0.01 s; 2,053 files took 96 s, against 740 s for Ghostscript.

Install

npm install fynepdf-pdfa

It brings the command line for your platform (Linux x64 and arm64 with glibc 2.28+, Windows x64, macOS 11+ on Apple silicon and Intel) with its fonts and PDFium. Nothing is downloaded at install time and no install script runs.

Command line

npx fynepdf-pdfa input.pdf output.pdf             # PDF/A-2b
npx fynepdf-pdfa input.pdf output.pdf --part 1    # PDF/A-1b (or --part 3)

It prints one line of JSON:

{"ok":true,"conforms":true,"pages":12,"signatures":0,"problems":[],"changes":{"cmyk-colours":31,"javascript":1}}

Node

const { toPdfa } = require("fynepdf-pdfa"); // or: import { toPdfa } from "fynepdf-pdfa";

const result = await toPdfa("input.pdf", "output.pdf", { part: 2 });
if (result.conforms) {
  // output.pdf is PDF/A-2b
} else {
  // output.pdf is written without the PDF/A label; result.problems says why,
  // for example "font-not-embedded: KozMinPr6N-Regular"
}

toPdfa rejects when the file can't be read (error.code "unreadable"), needs a password ("password") or can't be written ("write"). Options: part (1, 2 or 3), fonts (another fonts folder), flattenDpi (PDF/A-1b pages with transparency, default 300), signal. Types are included.

On a platform without a package, build the command line from the repository and set FYNEPDF_PDFA_BINARY to it.

More

How it works, the full benchmark against Ghostscript, LibreOffice and OCRmyPDF, and the C++ library: github.com/fynepdf/fynepdf-pdfa.

MIT, © 2026 FynePDF. The libraries inside each platform package keep their own licences (licenses/), as do the fonts (fonts/).