Question 1

Do I need a special FastAPI adapter?

Accepted Answer

No. PDFDancer is a standard Python package. Use it directly inside FastAPI routes, dependencies, and background tasks.

Question 2

Can I stream processed PDFs back to clients?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Use FastAPI's StreamingResponse with a binary file stream after processing to return the modified PDF as a download.

Question 3

Does this work for upload-edit-download APIs?

Accepted Answer

Yes. A common flow is UploadFile -> save temp file -> process with PDFDancer -> stream the result as application/pdf.

Question 4

Is there a free tier?

Accepted Answer

Yes. PDFDancer offers a free tier for development and testing — no credit card required. Paid plans unlock higher throughput, batch processing, and priority support.

Question 5

Is redaction compliance-grade (HIPAA, GDPR)?

Accepted Answer

Yes. PDFDancer redaction is permanent content removal — no overlays, no remnants. Every redaction is logged with timestamp, entity type, and confidence score. This produces the audit trail courts and regulators require.

Question 6

Does editing preserve the original layout?

Accepted Answer

Yes, with automatic reflow. When you replace text, PDFDancer adjusts spacing and line breaks to fit the new text within the original paragraph bounds. Fonts stay the same. If the new text is longer, it wraps. If shorter, it reflows. The original design is preserved.

Question 7

Can I edit scanned PDFs (image-only)?

Accepted Answer

PDFDancer works on text-based PDFs by default. For scanned PDFs (image-only), OCR is available as an add-on on the Pro and Enterprise plans — it extracts text from images so PDFDancer can then edit it like any other PDF.

FastAPI PDF Processing: Upload, Edit, Redact, Stream Download

Handle File Upload and Apply PDF Edits

Process Content: Edit or Redact

Stream the Result with `StreamingResponse`

Frequently Asked Questions

Related SDK Pages

Python SDK

All SDKs

Python Redaction SDK

API Reference

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