Open Source PDF Software
Sort By:
Browse free open source PDF software and projects for Windows and Linux below. Use the toggles on the left to filter open source PDF software by OS, license, language, programming language, and project status.
-
Try Google Cloud Risk-Free With $300 in CreditUse your credit across every product. Compute, storage, AI, analytics. When it runs out, 20+ products stay free. You only pay when you choose to.
-
Gemini 3 and 200+ AI Models on One PlatformBuild generative AI apps with Vertex AI. Switch between models without switching platforms.
-
1
Pandoc
The universal markup converter
Pandoc is a universal document converter able to convert files from a multitude of markup formats into another. With Pandoc, you have a swiss-army knife of a converter, able to convert practically any markup format into any other. Pandoc contains a Haskell library for conversions as well as a command-line tool that uses this library. It can convert to and from just about anything-- lightweight markup formats, HTML formats, documentation formats, ebooks, TeX formats, word processor formats and so much more. It understands several useful markdown syntax extensions, such as document metadata, footnotes, tables, and more. If you want strict markdown compatibility however, these extensions can be turned off. Pandoc is no doubt powerful and customizable, but it is important to note that its intermediate representation of a document is less expressive than many of the formats, so it may not produce perfect conversions every time. -
2
QPDF
PDF transformation/manipulation program + library
QPDF is a C++ library and set of programs that inspect and manipulate the structure of PDF files. It can encrypt and linearize files, expose the internals of a PDF file, and do many other operations useful to end users and PDF developers. -
3
NAPS2 - Not Another PDF Scanner
Scan documents to PDF and other file types, as simply as possible.
Visit NAPS2's home page at www.naps2.com. NAPS2 is a document scanning application with a focus on simplicity and ease of use. Scan your documents from WIA- and TWAIN-compatible scanners, organize the pages as you like, and save them as PDF, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, and other file formats. Available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. NAPS2 is currently available in over 40 different languages. Want to see NAPS2 in your preferred language? Help translate! See the wiki for more details. -
4
OCRmyPDF
OCRmyPDF adds an OCR text layer to scanned PDF files
OCRmyPDF adds an optical character recognition (OCR) text layer to scanned PDF files, allowing them to be searched. PDF is the best format for storing and exchanging scanned documents. Unfortunately, PDFs can be difficult to modify. OCRmyPDF makes it easy to apply image processing and OCR (recognized, searchable text) to existing PDFs. -
MongoDB Atlas runs apps anywhereMongoDB Atlas gives you the freedom to build and run modern applications anywhere—across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. With global availability in over 115 regions, Atlas lets you deploy close to your users, meet compliance needs, and scale with confidence across any geography.
-
5
PDF.js
A PDF Reader in JavaScript
PDF.js is a web standards-based platform for parsing and rendering Portable Document Formats (PDFs). Open source and built with HTML5, this PDF viewer is supported by a great community and Mozilla Labs. PDF.js can be used on both modern and older browsers, and is built into version 19+ of Firefox. -
6
PDF4QT
Open source PDF editor
PDF4QT is open source PDF editor based on Qt framework. It contains a C++ library, applications for viewing/editing PDF documents, and a command line tool. PDF4QT is an open-source PDF editor for Windows/Linux. It is a modern solution for viewing/editing/rendering PDF documents, for users and developers alike. For developers, there is a C++ library and a command line tool for use in scripts. For users, there are four applications offering many features. The project is hosted on Github and uses the license LGPLv3. The applications are primarily used by target users to view, edit, manipulate or compare PDF documents. Users can preview these applications in the screenshots section of this webpage. Basic browsing and lots of other functionalities, such as encryption, reading a document, verification of digital signatures, editing of annotations, searching for text using regular expressions, drawing pages into an image, and much more. Several plug-ins are available. -
7
mPDF
PHP library generating PDF files from UTF-8 encoded HTML
mPDF is a PHP library that generates PDF files from UTF-8 encoded HTML. The original author, Ian Back, wrote mPDF to output PDF files ‘on-the-fly’ from his website, handling different languages. It is slower than the original scripts e.g. HTML2FPDF and produces larger files when using Unicode fonts, but support for CSS styles etc. and has been much enhanced. Supports almost all languages including RTL (Arabic and Hebrew), and CJK (Chinese-Japanese-Korean). Nested block-level elements (e.g. P, DIV) including margins, borders, padding, line height, background colors, etc. Right-to-left languages are supported, with automatic detection of RTL characters within a document. Transposes tables, lists, text justification, and table cell alignment, as well as a full-text reversal for RTL characters. Automatically detects non-RTL characters and displays these in the original order. -
8
TCPDF - PHP class for PDF
PHP class for PDF
TCPDF is a PHP class for generating PDF documents without requiring external extensions. TCPDF Supports UTF-8, Unicode, RTL languages, XHTML, Javascript, digital signatures, barcodes and much more. IMPORTANT: This version will be soon marked as deprecated and replaced by a new version currently under development: https://github.com/tecnickcom/tc-lib-pdf -
9
OpenPDF
open source Java library for creating and editing PDF files
OpenPDF is a Java library for creating and editing PDF files with a LGPL and MPL open source license. OpenPDF is the LGPL/MPL open source successor of iText, and is based on a fork, of a fork, of iText 4 svn tag. -
Application Monitoring That Won't Slow Your App DownFull APM with errors, performance, logs, and uptime monitoring. 99.999% uptime SLA on the platform itself.
-
10
PdfBooklet is a Python Gtk application which allows to make books or booklets from existing pdf files. It can also adjust margins, rotate, scale, merge files or extract pages.
-
11
pdfcpu
A PDF processor written in Go
pdfcpu is a PDF processing library written in Go supporting encryption. It provides both an API and a CLI. Supported are all versions up to PDF 1.7 (ISO-32000). This is an effort to build a comprehensive PDF processing library from the ground up written in Go. Over time pdfcpu aims to support the standard range of PDF processing features and also any interesting use cases that may present themselves along the way. The main focus lies on strong support for batch processing and scripting via a rich command line. At the same time pdfcpu wants to make it easy to integrate PDF processing into your Go-based backend system by providing a robust command set. Always make sure your work is based on the latest commit! pdfcpu is still Alpha - bugfixes are committed on the fly and will be mentioned in the next release notes. -
12
Tabula
Extract data in CSV format from PDFs
If you’ve ever tried to do anything with data provided to you in PDFs, you know how painful it is — there's no easy way to copy-and-paste rows of data out of PDF files. Tabula allows you to extract that data into a CSV or Microsoft Excel spreadsheet using a simple, easy-to-use interface. Tabula works on Mac, Windows and Linux. Tabula was created by journalists for journalists and anyone else working with data locked away in PDFs. Tabula will always be free and open source. -
13
Free editor for PDF documents. Complete editing of PDF documents is possible with PDFedit. You can change raw pdf objects (for advanced users) or use many gui functions. Functionality can be easily extended using a scripting language (ECMAScript).
-
14
Unredact
A simple tool for reading in poorly redacted documents
Unredact is a specialized tool that attempts to reconstruct redacted or obscured text in images, PDFs, or screenshots using a combination of image processing and generative AI inference to suggest plausible completions of blurred, black-boxed, or jumbled content. Unlike traditional optical character recognition (OCR), which only reads visible text, Unredact focuses on inferring missing content where redaction has been applied by analyzing surrounding context, font characteristics, and linguistic patterns to produce candidate reconstructions. It accepts a variety of input formats, automatically identifies redacted regions, and then generates text suggestions that are presented alongside visual overlays so users can choose or refine outputs. -
15
jsPDF
HTML5 client solution for generating PDFs
The leading HTML5 client solution for generating PDFs. Perfect for event tickets, reports, certificates, you name it! PDFs are ubiquitous across the web, with virtually every enterprise relying on them to share documents. We created jsPDF to solve a major problem with how pdf files were being generated. We decided to make it open-source to allow a community of developers to expand on it. -
16
pstoedit
converts PostScript or PDF files to other vector graphics formats
pstoedit is a tool converting PostScript and PDF files into various other formats suported by different drawing editors. As a prerequesite it needs GhostScript to be installed (binary installation is sufficient). -
17
Nano PDF Editor
Edit PDF files with Nano Banana
Nano PDF Editor is a minimalist, portable PDF viewer and toolkit that focuses on simplicity, speed, and ease of integration for applications that need basic PDF rendering without heavy dependencies. It provides core functionality such as page navigation, zooming, text selection, and rendering directly to native graphics surfaces, making it suitable for lightweight PDF viewing scenarios on desktop or embedded platforms. Designed to be easily embedded into larger software projects, Nano-PDF has a small code footprint and straightforward APIs that developers can call from common languages, helping it fit into text editors, document explorers, or custom user interfaces with minimal effort. The viewer strives to comply with standard PDF features, like annotations and linked bookmarks, while avoiding the complexity of full-featured document suites that prioritize editing or creation. -
18
PoDoFo
A PDF parsing, modification and creation library.
The PoDoFo library is a free, portable C++ library. It can parse and modify existing PDF files and create new ones from scratch. It also includes several tools to work with PDF files. It features an unique approach which provides access to PDF documents via an object tree. Therefore, PDFs can be created and or manipulated using a simple tree structure. Development of PoDoFo has been moved to GitHub: https://github.com/podofo/podofo Please raise new issues in the GitHub project. -
19
pdfmake
Client/server side PDF printing in pure JavaScript
Print PDFs directly in the browser or delegate it to your NodeJS backend. Use the same document definition in both cases. Forget about manual x, y calculations. Declare document structure and let pdfmake do the rest. Use paragraphs, columns, lists, tables, canvas, etc. Declare your own styles, use custom fonts, build a DSL and extend the framework. Provides a set of options to disable font layout cache and to control when pages are flushed to the output file. Pdfmake is runnable in browser (client-side) and in Node.js (server-side). PDF name can be defined only by using metadata title property. Add-ons used in browsers can affect the functionality of pdfmake (especially for open() and print()). If pdfmake is not working try disable add-ons in browser. The supported browsers are Internet Explorer 10+, Edge 12+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari. -
20
PDF Split and Merge
Split and merge PDF files on any platform
Split and merge PDF files with PDFsam, an easy-to-use desktop tool with graphical, command line and web interface. -
21
iText®, a JAVA PDF library
PDF Library for Developers
iText is an open-source PDF library available for Java and .NET (C#). iText allows you to effortlessly generate and manipulate standards-compliant PDF documents with a powerful and feature-rich SDK. With iText, you can create archivable and accessible PDFs, split and merge documents, fill and flatten forms, digitally sign documents, and more. iText add-ons enable additional functionality, such as PDF creation from HTML templates, secure redaction, OCR, and much more. The latest versions of iText build on the success of previous versions and feature an improved document engine, high and low-level programming capabilities, and a more efficient modular structure. iText represents the next level for developers looking to leverage PDF in document workflows. The main project page for iText is now on GitHub, and all the latest releases, code samples, open source add-ons and tools, etc. can be found at https://github.com/itext/. -
22
PDFCraft
PDFCraft is a free, privacy-focused PDF toolkit
PDFCraft is an extensible toolkit for creating, editing, and transforming PDF documents with both a graphical interface and a scripting API, making it useful for users ranging from casual editors to automated document processors. At its core, the project provides a clean, modern UI where you can rearrange pages, annotate text, insert images, fill forms, and export to multiple formats, all without needing a heavyweight commercial PDF suite. But beyond manual editing, it also offers a programmable layer so developers can write scripts to batch process documents, generate templated reports, or extract structured data from PDFs for integration in workflows. The design emphasizes quality and compatibility: output PDFs render accurately across readers, preserve metadata, and support interactive elements like hyperlinks and form fields. -
23
Vanilla.PDF
Cross-platform SDK for creating and modifying PDF documents
Vanilla.PDF is a modern, high-performance, open-source C++17 SDK designed for creating, editing, signing, and analyzing PDF documents across multiple platforms. It requires no external runtime dependencies, making it lightweight and ideal for embedding into desktop applications, servers, or automation pipelines. The SDK offers full cross-platform support including Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android, with builds available for major compilers and architectures. Vanilla.PDF supports advanced PDF features such as adding CMS (PKCS#7) digital signatures, modifying content streams and metadata, and working with encryption and permissions based on standard PDF security models. It includes tools for parsing PDF internals like cross-reference tables and objects, providing fine-grained document analysis capabilities. The project is unit-tested with continuous integration pipelines, supporting sanitizers for enhanced code quality and stability. -
24
iLovePDF Api
iLovePDF Rest Api - PHP Library
Develop and automate PDF processing tasks like Compress PDF, merging PDF, Split PDF, converting Office to PDF, PDF to JPG, Images to PDF, adding Page Numbers, Rotate PDF, Unlocking PDF, stamping a Watermark, and Repair PDF. Each one with several settings to get your desired results. Strong infrastructure to offer the best-dedicated processing power. You might know us from ilovepdf.com where we process millions of PDFs daily. We offer a simple and concise API Reference and Guide as well as API Libraries with their own docs too. Our infrastructure uses the best PDF technology for processing PDF files. Merge and split documents with a variety of custom options. Remove, extract or organize PDF pages as you need. Reduce the size of your PDF while maintaining its original quality and formatting. Easily convert Images, MS Word, PowerPoint and Excel files into non-editable PDF documents. Convert PDF documents to JPG images or to PDF/A format. -
25
py-pdf-parser
A Python tool to help extracting information from structured PDFs
py-pdf-parser is a Python tool designed to help extract information from structured PDFs. It provides a simple interface to define parsing rules and extract data from PDF documents.
