HotPDF Delphi Component for Delphi PDF creation and editing

HotPDF Delphi Component At a glance

Product	HotPDF Delphi Component
Best for	Developer-owned document workflows in Delphi and C++Builder
IDE support	Delphi and C++Builder XE5 through 13 Florence; Free Pascal 3.2.2 / Lazarus (Win32, Win64)
Deployment	Native Windows application integration
Source code	Object Pascal source code included with commercial licences
Licensing	Royalty-free application deployment
Updates	One year of updates and email support included
Pricing	One-time developer-count licensing
Documentation	HotPDF Delphi Component

Native PDF creation and editing for Delphi and C++Builder

HotPDF is a source-level Delphi and C++Builder PDF component for applications that need to create, edit, secure, sign, validate, and assemble PDF documents directly from VCL code. It does not require an external PDF runtime for its core authoring workflow and is designed for Windows desktop software built with RAD Studio.

Use HotPDF when your application needs programmatic page drawing, Unicode text output, font embedding and subsetting, forms, annotations, image import, PDF merge/edit operations, encryption, digital signatures, standards-aware output, and lightweight preflight automation from one native API surface.

HotPDF supports RAD Studio XE5 through RAD Studio 13.1 Florence for Delphi and C++Builder, including Win32, Win64, and Win64x workflows, and builds with Free Pascal 3.2.2 and Lazarus for Win32 and Win64.

Main capabilities

• Create new PDFs, add pages, draw text and vector graphics, register reusable Form XObjects, place images, and save to files or caller-owned streams.
• Load existing PDFs, inspect page boxes, search bookmark destinations, copy pages, insert pages, extract pages, reorder pages, delete pages, merge documents, stamp or watermark content, and update document information.
• Add hyperlinks, named destinations, outlines, file attachments, comments, popups, highlight annotations, free-text annotations, redaction annotations, watermark annotations, page thumbnails, layers, page transitions, and viewer preferences.
• Create AcroForm fields, generated appearance streams, signature fields, multi-line and comb text fields, rich-text field values, XFA packet containers, form-field trigger wrappers, and multiple Unicode fonts in the AcroForm resource dictionary where the selected standard profile allows them.
• Inspect, update, rename, remove, or flatten fields in loaded AcroForm documents before saving an edited copy.
• Embed and subset TrueType, Type 1 PFB, OpenType-CFF, and CID-keyed CFF fonts for compact multilingual output, including CJK-heavy documents.
• Generate Unicode text, right-to-left text, vertical text, supplementary-plane characters such as emoji, Arabic / Persian / Urdu shaping, Latin standard ligatures, Devanagari reordering, and OpenType GSUB-based glyph output with matching /CIDToGIDMap, /W, and /ToUnicode integration.
• Import JPEG, bitmap, TIFF, JPEG2000, JBIG2, WMF, and EMF content, with zlib-ng Flate compression and libjpeg-turbo backed JPEG handling.
• Protect documents with passwords, AES-128, AES-256, PDF 2.0 AES-256 R6, public-key recipient encryption, and permission flags.
• Sign PDFs with in-process PFX / PKCS#12 support and PAdES B-B, B-T, B-LT, and B-LTA workflows including RFC 3161 timestamps and DSS / VRI dictionaries.
• Create text, JSON, and HTML preflight reports, apply preflight profiles and presets, aggregate batch results, embed report evidence in PDFs, compare reports, and run focused PDF/VT validation.
• Use optional PDF backends for FastReport, QuickReport, ReportBuilder, and DevExpress ExpressPrinting when existing report layouts should emit through HotPDF.
• Process very large PDFs at high speed with the Direct File API, which opens, copies, and rewrites documents directly on disk without loading the whole file into the object model. A 60,000-page / 883 MB document opens or copies in about 2-3 seconds, and re-saving it after a metadata or object change takes roughly 20 seconds.
• Encrypt and decrypt with AES-256 at hardware speed: where the CPU offers AES-NI, AES-256-CBC reaches about 442 MB/s for encryption and 832 MB/s for decryption (around 3× and 5.7× faster than the portable software path), whilst opening a large password-protected PDF now uses far less memory.

Download the HotPDF Delphi Component DEMO package

2026-09-22 Version 2.755.1: HotPDF release notes. Recent releases add optional Tesseract and RapidOCR engine factories that attach searchable text layers with word coordinates, timeouts, and cancellation, exchange loaded multi-select choice field values through FDF and XFDF with option boundaries preserved, and convert supported loaded FreeText annotations to plain ASCII Helvetica text with a rebuilt appearance. A round of fixes tightens FDF form-field export and hexadecimal option-value round trips, corrects loaded-page box inheritance and shared page-object lifetimes, and moves the Win64 build scripts to RAD Studio 12's dcc64 layout.

Licensing and pricing

Pay with credit/debit cards, PayPal, AliPay, or wire transfer through 2Checkout / FastSpring -- every tier lists both checkouts, choose either. Every new HotPDF licence includes the full Object Pascal source code, one year of updates, and one year of email support.

Licence	Developers	Price	Order
Single	1 developer	$500	Order
Small Business	Up to 10 developers	$1000	Order
Medium Business	Up to 30 developers	$1500	Order
Enterprise	All developers in one company and its subsidiaries within a single country	$3000	Order
Corporate	All developers in one company and its subsidiaries worldwide	$6000	Order

Enterprise and Corporate source extras: HotPDF Enterprise and Corporate both include complete source code for dedicated tool-grade examples, currently PDF Preflight Pro and XFA & AcroForms Flattener Pro; source code for the internal testing projects is available on request.

Existing customer renewal: Renew update access at 40% of the full licence price; if your update service has been interrupted for more than 1 year, a full-price purchase is required instead. Open the HotPDF purchase and renewal page.

Standards, signing, and validation workflows

HotPDF supports standards-aware PDF generation workflows for PDF/A-1, PDF/A-2, PDF/A-3, PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-3, PDF/X-4, and PDF/UA-1. It also includes preflight and focused PDF/VT validation helpers for review and automation workflows. The component exposes profile-specific switches and guards so calls that would break the selected profile can fail early instead of silently writing a non-conformant PDF.

Workflow	HotPDF support	Author responsibility
PDF/A-1, PDF/A-2, PDF/A-3	PDFACompliance, XMP pdfaid metadata, OutputIntent support, font-embedding enforcement, JavaScript/encryption/annotation/profile guards, and PDF/A-2A / PDF/A-3A smoke outputs validated with veraPDF.	Choose the target level, provide real ICC OutputIntent data, set title/language, embed appropriate fonts, and avoid content outside the selected archival profile.
PDF/UA-1	PDFUACompliance, Tagged PDF root, pdfuaid metadata, /Lang, DisplayDocTitle, structure elements, marked content, role mapping, ParentTree wiring, alternate text and ActualText helpers.	Build meaningful document structure, reading order, heading hierarchy, list/table semantics, and alternative descriptions for real content.
PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-3, PDF/X-4	PDFXCompliance, OutputIntent support, prepress profile guards, and restrictions for interactive or non-print-safe features.	Provide print-appropriate colour management, page boxes, and production settings for the chosen prepress workflow.
PDF/VT validation	ValidatePDFVT checks XMP PDF/VT identification, metadata namespace, modification-date consistency, PDF/X base markers, OutputIntent, catalogue DPartRoot structure, loadable pages, and page-level DPart coverage.	Use it to audit incoming or produced files; authoring the full variable-data production intent remains the caller's responsibility.

PDF/A Level A enables the Tagged PDF foundation required by the archival profile. It does not automatically advertise PDF/UA-1; HotPDF emits the PDF/UA identity only when PDFUACompliance is explicitly enabled.

Preflight APIs can produce text, JSON, and HTML reports, filter output through saved profiles or built-in presets, aggregate batch results, embed report evidence in a review copy, compare reports, and convert reports into a veraPDF-style structure for downstream tooling.

Additional feature coverage

• OpenType GSUB LookupType 1-8 support, script/language feature selection, Latin standard ligatures, Arabic / Persian / Urdu shaping, Devanagari reordering, and PUA synthetic codepoint emission for font-specific glyphs.
• XFA packet container support, AcroForm /AA trigger wrappers, multiple Unicode fonts in AcroForm /DR, and generated CID-font appearance streams.
• Incremental update saving, multi-signature workflows, signature placeholders, in-process CMS SignedData generation, and long-term validation dictionaries.
• Loaded-document helpers for page-box inspection, bookmark destination lookup, AcroForm field inspection, field value updates, field renaming, field removal, and form flattening.
• Preflight profile load/save/validate/merge/diff helpers, batch aggregation, embedded report validation, XMP report embedding, focused PDF/VT validation, and conservative repair from preflight reports.
• PDF 1.3 through PDF 1.7 feature gates, selected PDF 2.0 encryption support, object streams, XRef streams, OutputIntents, transparency groups, soft masks, patterns, shadings, and prepress ExtGState controls.

HotPDF online documentation

Quick Delphi example

program HelloHotPDF;

uses
  System.SysUtils,
  HPDFDoc;

var
  PDF: THotPDF;
begin
  PDF := THotPDF.Create(nil);
  try
    PDF.AutoLaunch := False;
    PDF.FileName := 'HelloHotPDF.pdf';
    PDF.Compression := cmFlateDecode;
    PDF.EnableFontSubsetting := True;
    PDF.BeginDoc;
    PDF.CurrentPage.SetFont('Arial', [], 18);
    PDF.CurrentPage.TextOut(50, 50, 0, 'Hello HotPDF');
    PDF.EndDoc;
  finally
    PDF.Free;
  end;
end.

Download the HotPDF Delphi Component DEMO package
Supports RAD Studio XE5 through RAD Studio 13.1 Florence for Delphi and C++Builder (Win32, Win64, and Win64x workflows) and Free Pascal 3.2.2 / Lazarus (Win32, Win64)

When to choose HotPDF

• Choose HotPDF when your application creates or edits PDF documents and you would rather ship nothing alongside it: HotPDF carries its own rendering engine, image codecs, and font engine, so it compiles straight into your executable with no PDF runtime to redistribute or audit.
• Choose PDFium Delphi Component when the work is reading and reviewing rather than authoring: viewer architecture, accessible read-aloud, table extraction, semantic reflow to HTML, and standards validation. It renders through pdfium.dll, which you redistribute with your application.
• Choose PDF Library for Delphi when you need OCR, barcode reading, PKCS#11 hardware-token signing, EU trust-list validation, or DOCX / HTML export, or when non-Delphi code has to call in through DLL, ActiveX, or Dylib.

Comparing the whole family? See the PDF developer libraries overview for a side-by-side of PDFium Delphi Component, losLab PDF Library, and HotPDF Delphi Component.

Frequently asked questions

Which Delphi and C++Builder versions are supported?

HotPDF supports RAD Studio XE5 through RAD Studio 13.1 Florence for both Delphi and C++Builder, covering Win32, Win64, and Win64x application targets. The whole library also builds with Free Pascal 3.2.2 and Lazarus for Win32 and Win64, with native Flate compression and AES encryption; the statically linked TIFF, JPEG 2000, JBIG2, and ICC codecs remain Delphi-only.

Is source code included?

Commercial licences include Object Pascal source code for integration, review, and long-term maintenance.

Are runtime royalties required?

Licensed applications can be deployed royalty-free without per-document or per-end-user runtime fees.

How do I evaluate the product?

Download the demo package and review the online documentation before purchase.

What does a new licence include?

A new licence includes source code, one year of updates, and one year of email support.

How does renewal work?

Existing customers can renew update access at the published renewal price.

Where is the API documentation?

The documentation is available under the localised HotPDF Delphi Component documentation link on this page.

What does a HotPDF licence include, and how does renewal work?

A new licence ($500 Single, $1000 Small Business (up to 10 developers), $1500 Medium Business (up to 30 developers), $3000 Enterprise (one company, one country), $6000 Corporate (one company, worldwide)) includes full source code, one year of updates, and one year of email support. Existing customers renew update access at 40% of the full price.