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 ↗
More like this: all 442 launches in browser-based pdf tools →
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.
- TeXbrain, a LaTeX editor that runs pdfTeX in the browser via WASM · hn · 2026-08-25 · 118 upvotes · similarity 0.56
- How far can you push file conversion into the browser? · hn · 2026-02-19 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- LaTeX To Image · ph · 2026-09-19 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Docx to PDF in the Browser Using Pandoc and Typst (WASM) · hn · 2026-02-09 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- <15MB Local-first Interactive LaTeX Scratchpad in the Browser · hn · 2026-09-13 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- Word to LaTeX (Offline) · ph · 2026-10-23 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- OpenTex · ph · 2026-11-02 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- Doc-Translator.org · ph · 2026-09-16 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.47
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