PDF/A

Introduction

Use this guide when you need archival-oriented PDF output (ISO 19005/PDF-A) and want to control validation behavior directly in the conversion request.

Incompatible with encryption: PDF/A forbids encryption. Using pdf.pdfa together with pdf.encryption returns an error.

Best-effort vs strict check: Without pdf.pdfa.verify, conversion targets PDF/A but does not fail the request if the toolchain cannot satisfy every rule. Set verify: true to enforce compliance via VeraPDF (failed checks return 422, no PDF). For legal archives, use verify: true or validate outputs yourself with VeraPDF.

Prerequisites

A PolyDoc account and API key — sign up for free, no credit card required. The free plan includes 150 PDF conversions per month.
A PDF conversion flow (HTML or URL source) that you want to archive or validate for compliance workflows.

Configuration

Enable PDF/A conversion

Set pdf.pdfa in your request payload to post-process the generated PDF toward PDF/A conformance (ISO 19005).

"3b" is recommended for HTML-to-PDF workflows because Chromium rendering can include transparency, which PDF/A-1b forbids. See pdf.pdfa.level in the API reference.

{
  "source": "https://example.com/invoice/INV-2026-042",
  "pdf": {
    "pdfa": {
      "level": "3b"
    }
  }
}

Verify compliance

Set pdf.pdfa.verify to true to require PDF/A compliance: VeraPDF runs after conversion, and if the output is not compliant the API responds with 422 Unprocessable Entity (JSON body with code: "PDFA_VERIFICATION_FAILED" and rule summaries in pdfa). No PDF is returned in that case. When verification succeeds, you get a normal 200 response with the PDF body (same as without verify); compliance is implied by the absence of 422.

Omit verify or set it to false for best-effort conversion without a strict compliance guarantee.

{
  "source": "<html><body><h1>Archive copy</h1></body></html>",
  "pdf": {
    "pdfa": {
      "level": "3b",
      "verify": true
    }
  }
}

Example request

{
  "source": "<html><body><h1>Invoice INV-2026-042</h1></body></html>",
  "layout": {
    "format": "A4"
  },
  "pdf": {
    "pdfa": {
      "level": "3b",
      "verify": true
    }
  }
}

Tips

Pick the level intentionally: Use "3b" for most modern workflows. Use "2b" or "1b" only when downstream systems explicitly require those targets. Values map to pdf.pdfa.level.

Validate final business documents: For legal archives, verify representative outputs in CI or pre-release checks instead of relying on spot checks.

Introduction​

Prerequisites​

Configuration​

Enable PDF/A conversion​

Verify compliance​

Example request​

Tips​