PDF from Quarto with Typst — no LaTeX required

How to produce PDFs from Quarto using the Typst engine instead of LaTeX: faster renders, simpler setup, and clean control over page layout.

For years, a PDF from R Markdown or Quarto meant LaTeX: a multi-gigabyte install and slow renders. Quarto now ships with Typst, a modern typesetting system that produces beautiful PDFs in a fraction of the time — and it’s built in, so there’s nothing to install.

The one-line switch

Change the format and render:

---
title: "Analysis Report"
format: typst
---

quarto render report.qmd

That’s a PDF. No tinytex, no LaTeX distribution, no Error: LaTeX failed. On a typical report, Typst renders noticeably faster than the LaTeX path.

Page layout, the easy way

Typst exposes common layout controls directly in the YAML — no LaTeX preamble required:

---
format:
  typst:
    papersize: a4
    margin:
      x: 2.5cm
      y: 2cm
    fontsize: 11pt
    columns: 1
---

Set the paper size, margins, base font size and column count as plain fields. For finer control you can supply a Typst template, but most reports never need one.

When LaTeX still wins

Typst is excellent for reports, letters and general documents. Reach for LaTeX (format: pdf) when you need something Typst doesn’t yet match — for example, a specific journal’s LaTeX submission class, or very heavy mathematical typesetting with established macros. For the other 90% of PDFs, Typst is the faster, simpler default.

Everything else still works

Switching the engine doesn’t change how you write. Your Markdown, code chunks, figures and cross-references all render the same way — Typst just handles the final typesetting. You can even keep HTML and Typst side by side:

---
format:
  html: default
  typst: default
---

one source, a web page and a PDF.

---

Need publication-ready PDFs generated straight from your data and analysis? That’s the kind of pipeline we build.