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Latex.to

LaTeX to PDF via Full Tex Live in the Browser

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Hi HN, I implemented your feedback:latex.to is an Overleaf alternative that now runs a full Tex Live distribution in the browser.This is done via CheerpX (JIT wasm engine) running a 32bit alpine image with TeX Live.Things I previously tried: - originally this project started with just KaTeX for LaTeX to image - v86 wasm engine: Too slow (at least 10 times slower than CheerpX) - various TeX Live binaries wasm ports: These usually don't port Biber (because it's a Perl app) or engines like ConTeXt.What makes this work: - CheerpX only streams (via HTTP range requests) the data it needs. Compiling the base example only downloads 50 MB (the whole image is 5GB). - Cloudflare R2 can only cache files less than 512MB. Hence the 5GB image is split into 1 base image and 19 mount images. - LaTeX needs to bake (index) the fonts before compiling which can take a long time and can OOM CheerpX. Hence all fonts more than 0.7 MB are prebaked into the image file.The first compile is a bit slower because it needs to download assets like fonts, but everything is cached and the second compile is much faster.100% free, no login, no compile timeout, documents are compiled in the browser and NOT sent to a remote server.Please let me know in case something doesn't work / you have any questions or feedback.

HN · launched Aug 3, 2026 · 6 upvotes (top 69%) · 1 view

Niche: browser-based pdf tools · 442 launches, 36 in the last 7 days ▼ -32% · Explore this niche →

Category and tags

  • Horizontal
  • Dev tools
  • Prosumer
  • Not AI
  • Commercial product

Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗

Could you build this?

Partial While the web editor UI and template library are straightforward to build, running a complete 5.6 GB TeX Live distribution client-side via CheerpX x86 virtualization and virtual filesystem emulation requires complex systems engineering.

What it would actually take: The architecture uses CheerpX (a WebAssembly-based x86 JIT virtual machine) running a 32-bit Alpine Linux environment that executes native TeX engines (pdfLaTeX, XeLaTeX, LuaLaTeX). The primary difficulty is orchestrating the virtual block device, IndexedDB caching for gigabytes of package binaries, and mapping I/O between the browser DOM and the emulated Linux environment without latency bottlenecks. Building this requires deep knowledge of WebAssembly system interfaces, OS virtualization, and TeX package management.

Discussion

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Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one : 607 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #465 of 608 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 275 days after the earliest competitor.

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