Convert XPS to PDF — Free Online Converter

XPS (XML Paper Specification) is Microsoft's fixed-layout document format, designed as a competitor to PDF. Introduced with Windows Vista in 2006, XPS packages pages as XML markup with embedded fonts, images, and vector graphics inside a ZIP container. Despite Microsoft's backing, XPS never achieved widespread adoption — it's rarely encountered outside Windows environments, and Microsoft itself deprecated the XPS Document Writer in Windows 10 (version 1803).

PDF (Portable Document Format) is the universal fixed-layout document format with near-total global adoption. Converting XPS to PDF transforms a rarely-supported Microsoft format into the universally accepted document standard.

Almost no one outside the Windows ecosystem can open XPS files. macOS has no native XPS viewer, most Linux distributions don't include one, and mobile devices don't support it. Even on Windows, the XPS Viewer has been an optional feature since 2018. Converting to PDF produces a document that works everywhere — every operating system, browser, mobile device, and document management system supports PDF.

XPS is also a dead-end format. Microsoft has effectively abandoned it in favor of PDF (Microsoft Edge, Office, and Windows all now favor PDF). Converting XPS archives to PDF future-proofs your documents against further XPS support deprecation.

LibreOffice or Ghostscript reads the XPS ZIP container, parsing XML-based page markup, embedded fonts, vector path definitions, and raster images. Each XPS page is rendered as a PDF page with preserved layout, fonts, colors, and vector graphics. XPS and PDF share similar concepts (fixed-layout pages with embedded resources), so the mapping is relatively direct. Font subsetting is preserved or re-embedded in the PDF output. Vector paths are converted from XPS XAML notation to PDF path operators.