A free PDF component for .NET and ASP.NET web developers

Developers often ask me what PDF component I could suggest for their .NET development needs. Of course, by doing a quick search on "pdf component .net" reveals dozens of different components, free and commercial, good and bad. The problem is that it takes time to evaluate all these components, so a recommendation would point to the correct direction.

During the years, I've been using many different PDF components, but lately, I've been using a free PDF component called PDFSharp. This component is free for both private and commercial usage, and it works well in my experience.

This component is what I would call a "low-level PDF component", meaning that you have to be somewhat familiar on how PDF files work and what the internal structure is. But since I've been creating PDF files manually as well, this was not a problem.

In practice, you need to use X, Y coordinates to output text and graphics using a canvas, but if this works for you, then this component is easy to use in both traditional desktop applications and ASP.NET web applications. Deployment is also a matter of distributing a couple of DLL files (assemblies) along with your application.

Happy hacking!