epub2pdf compared with Calibre
Calibre is the answer most people are given and it is a good one. It is also a large install and a settings screen. Here is what each tool is actually for.
Read in this tab. Never uploaded. Here's why that's true.
Some characters won't survive this.
This is a fixed-layout EPUB.
Every page is already a picture, usually a comic or a children's book. You'll get those pictures, one per page, and the text options below won't change anything.
More options contents page, bookmarks, page numbers
Working…
This runs on your machine, so the speed is down to your machine. Keep the tab open.
Your PDF is ready
Before you print a hundred pages
- Look at page one first. Open it and check the type size and the margins on screen. Wrong choices are cheap to fix here and expensive to fix at the printer.
- Print two pages, not two hundred. Paper is whiter and type is smaller than a screen suggests. 11pt looks fine on a monitor and reads small on A4.
- Set your printer to actual size. "Fit to page" shrinks everything by a few per cent and undoes the margins you just chose.
Reading it on a tablet or phone
Copy it across however you normally would. If the type looks small, convert again at a smaller page size rather than a larger point size — the page shrinks with it, so the text fills more of the screen.
Something went wrong
- 0 MB
- to install
- 3
- settings that matter
- 0
- bytes uploaded
The short version
Use Calibre if you need hyphenation, a non-Latin script, embedded fonts, a format other than EPUB, or a library of a thousand books to stay organised. It does all of that and this does none of it.
Use this if you have one EPUB, you want a PDF that looks like a book, and you would rather not install anything. The defaults here are the settings you would have ended up choosing in Calibre anyway.
Where they actually differ
| Calibre | epub2pdf | |
|---|---|---|
| Install | Desktop app, several hundred MB | None, it is a web page |
| Page numbers | Off by default, one checkbox | On by default |
| Running heads | Write an HTML template | On by default |
| Printed contents page | Optional, placed at the end | On by default, at the front |
| Hyphenation | Yes | No |
| Fonts | Embeds any family you choose | The 14 built into every PDF reader |
| Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, CJK | Yes | No, and it warns you first |
| Output size | Larger, fonts included | Often smaller than the EPUB |
| Other formats | MOBI, AZW3, DOCX, FB2 and more | EPUB in, PDF out |
| Where the file goes | Nowhere, it is on your machine | Nowhere, it stays in the tab |
The font trade, which is the real difference
Calibre embeds fonts. You pick a serif family and it goes into the file, so the PDF renders identically on any machine, in any script, forever. That is the right answer for something you are archiving.
This converter embeds nothing. It sets the book in Times, Helvetica and Courier, the fonts built into every PDF reader ever made. A 400-page novel comes out at a couple of megabytes and often lands smaller than the EPUB it came from.
The cost is real and worth stating: those built-in fonts only cover Latin script and its accents. French, German, Polish, Turkish, Vietnamese are all fine. Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic and CJK are not. The converter checks before it starts and tells you rather than handing you a document of question marks, but if your book is in one of those scripts, Calibre is the tool and this is not.
What Calibre does that is worth the install
Hyphenation. Calibre breaks long words at the line end. That lets a justified column keep even spacing at narrow measures. This converter does not hyphenate, which is why the advice on small page sizes is to turn justification off.
Every format. MOBI, AZW3, FB2, DOCX, LIT, PDB and back again. If your book is not an EPUB, this page is not for you.
A library. Metadata, covers, series, sending to a device over USB or email. Calibre is a library manager that happens to convert; converting is a feature, not the product.
Repeatability. ebook-convert on the command line means one setup
and then two hundred books through the same pipeline. There is no batch mode here.
What you give up by using it anyway
Mostly an afternoon. Calibre's PDF output panel has paper size, four margin fields, three font families, two font sizes, a hyphenation toggle, page numbers, header and footer templates and a contents option, and the defaults produce something noticeably unlike a book. The margins default to 72pt on every side, the type comes out larger than a printed novel, and the header fields are empty until you write HTML into them.
That is a fair price for the control. It is a poor price if you have one book, you want it on paper this evening, and you were never going to touch nineteen of the twenty settings.
Neither one removes DRM
If the book came from a shop that locks its files, neither tool will open it. Calibre refuses, and this refuses before it starts, with an explanation of which of the two protection schemes it found. There is more on that in why some EPUBs can't be converted, and on where to get books that are not locked in the first place in finding DRM-free ebooks.
Calibre is free software by Kovid Goyal and this site has nothing to do with it. If it is the right tool for your book, use it.
Questions
Is Calibre better than this?
For some jobs, plainly yes. Calibre hyphenates, embeds whatever fonts you like, converts a dozen formats in both directions, handles Greek, Cyrillic and CJK, and manages a library. It is a serious piece of software and it is free. What it is not is quick: it is a several-hundred-megabyte install and its PDF output has around twenty settings, most of which you have to change before the result looks like a book.
Can Calibre add page numbers and running heads?
Yes, but you have to ask. Page numbers are a checkbox called "Add page numbers to the bottom of every page". Running heads need you to write an HTML template into the header field, using placeholders like _TITLE_ and _PAGENUM_. Both are documented and neither is on by default, which is why so many Calibre PDFs arrive with neither.
What about the table of contents?
Calibre has a "--pdf-add-toc" option that adds a contents list with page numbers at the end of the PDF. Here the contents page is generated at the front, where a book puts it, and it is on by default. Both tools also write PDF bookmarks from the book's own navigation.
Which produces a smaller file?
This one, usually by a wide margin, because it embeds no fonts at all. Calibre embeds the families you choose so the PDF renders identically everywhere, which is the correct trade for a book you are archiving and the wrong one for a book you are emailing.
Does either one remove DRM?
No. Neither tool will open a DRM-protected book as it ships. If a book came from a shop that locks its files, that lock is between you and the shop, and asking a converter about it is asking the wrong question.