JavaScript vs. PDF-LIB vs. PlayCode vs. WebAssembly Comparison Chart

Create and modify PDF documents in any JavaScript environment. Create PDF documents from scratch, or modify existing PDF documents. Draw text, images, and vector graphics. Embed your own fonts. Even embed and draw pages from other PDFs. Written in TypeScript and compiled to pure JavaScript with no native dependencies. Works in any JavaScript runtime, including browsers, Node, Deno, and even React Native. Add, insert, and remove pages. Split a single PDF into separate ones. Or merge multiple PDFs into a single document. Create new forms or fill and read existing fields. Checkboxes, buttons, radio groups, dropdowns, option lists, and text fields are all supported. If you aren't using a package manager, UMD modules are available on the unpkg and jsDelivr CDNs. Note that only some PDF readers can view attachments. This includes Adobe Reader, Foxit Reader, and Firefox. If you are using the CDN scripts in production, you should include a specific version number in the URL.

WebAssembly (abbreviated Wasm) is a binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine. Wasm is designed as a portable compilation target for programming languages, enabling deployment on the web for client and server applications. The Wasm stack machine is designed to be encoded in a size- and load-time-efficient binary format. WebAssembly aims to execute at native speed by taking advantage of common hardware capabilities available on a wide range of platforms. WebAssembly describes a memory-safe, sandboxed execution environment that may even be implemented inside existing JavaScript virtual machines. When embedded in the web, WebAssembly will enforce the same-origin and permissions security policies of the browser. WebAssembly is designed to be pretty-printed in a textual format for debugging, testing, experimenting, optimizing, learning, teaching, and writing programs by hand. The textual format will be used when viewing the source of Wasm modules on the web.