Papermark tracks views.
Apdf captures the full engagement.
Page views and seconds are where Papermark ends. Apdf captures annotations, form fills and every re-read — streamed into your stack, so you follow up while interest is still hot.
Why teams outgrow Papermark.
Papermark tells you a page was viewed and for how long. The moment you need more — what readers marked up, filled in, or came back to — there's nothing there.
Tracking stops at the view
Pages and seconds — that's the ceiling. No annotations, no form fills, no clicks: what readers actually do never becomes data.
Webhooks without depth
Lifecycle webhooks, gated to the €59/mo plan — no page, session or content events. “Automations” means wiring up Zapier.
A viewer, not an engine
Zero PDF operations — no HTML→PDF, no merge, no OCR. Papermark can only share files you've already made.
Open source, with an asterisk
Data rooms, AI and workflows sit under a commercial license — self-hosting them means an Enterprise deal. Seats cost extra, too.
What you get instead.
Everything you use Papermark's tracking for — secure links, page analytics, per-recipient identity — plus the engagement layer it never built.
Own the signal
Papermark's webhooks announce lifecycle — created, viewed. Apdf streams behavior: every read, click and annotation as a typed event, into any system you run.
Programmable PDFs
Generate from your own HTML, then merge, watermark, OCR and secure through one API. Papermark shares finished files — Apdf also makes them.
Agents that read the room
Both speak MCP. Theirs pulls view counts; Apdf hands agents the full read — sessions, dwell time, annotations — so follow-up lands while interest is hot.
Apdf vs. Papermark
Both track your documents. Only one captures what readers actually do.
Running a fundraising or M&A data room with NDA gating and granular permissions? That’s Papermark’s home turf — not ours. Apdf is for teams who need reader engagement inside their product, CRM and agents.
Pay for what you track,
not seats and tiers.
Papermark bills per seat and gates its developer features at €59/mo. With Apdf, the whole team and the event API are in every plan.
Per tier — plus €20–33 per extra seat.
- API, webhooks & MCP start at €59/mo
- Every extra team seat costs €20–33/mo
- Free tier: one seat, capped at 50 documents
- Data rooms need a paid license to self-host
Scales with what you track — not headcount.
- Unlimited team members on every plan
- Tracking, event API & PDF operations included
- Free plan, plus a 14-day Pro trial — no card
- Hard caps, never a surprise charge
Switch in an afternoon.
Nothing to migrate and nothing to re-learn. If you can share a Papermark link, you already know how Apdf works.
Upload or generate
Drop in your existing PDFs, or generate fresh ones from HTML through the API. No migration project, no import wizard.
Share a recipient link
Spin up a secure, per-recipient tracking link with your branding. Send it exactly like you sent Papermark links.
Watch the signal flow
Reads, returns, annotations and form fills stream straight into your dashboard, API, webhooks or agent — live.