Compare the Top Free PDF SDK as of September 2025

What is Free PDF SDK?

PDF SDKs (Software Development Kits) provide developers with the tools and libraries needed to integrate PDF functionality into their applications or websites. These SDKs offer features like viewing, editing, creating, converting, and annotating PDFs, allowing developers to build custom PDF solutions tailored to their needs. PDF SDKs often include APIs for manipulating text, images, and form data, as well as for handling document security, such as encryption and password protection. By using PDF SDKs, developers can add robust PDF capabilities to their software without having to build these features from scratch, saving time and resources. Compare and read user reviews of the best Free PDF SDK currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

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    Pdftools

    Pdftools

    PDF Tools

    Whether you have thousands of documents or millions, Pdftools has the products and services to help make processing a breeze. Designed for document-heavy industries, Pdftools’ suite of SDKs and APIs are here to make your document workflows easier, faster, and stress-free. Built on SDKs and APIs, the Pdftools products integrate seamlessly into your existing (or new) systems and applications. Process thousands of documents every minute. Our tools are precision-engineered to be efficient and run at blazing speeds. We’re engineers at heart, so we’re only satisfied with the most reliable, orderly, and usable, and well-documented platforms. Shrink file sizes down, but keep the quality and interactivity. Your documents will always be compliant for long-term archiving. We’ve obsessed over every detail in our products, and documented everything so it’s easy to get started.
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    Starting Price: $0/month/user
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  • 2
    pdfRest

    pdfRest

    Datalogics Inc.

    pdfRest API Toolkit was made by developers, for developers. Rapidly integrate PDF workflows with any business application, simply and seamlessly. pdfRest API Toolkit includes all of the PDF processing tools you'll need, to make your job easy. PDF to Word, PDF to Excel, PDF to PowerPoint, Add to PDF, Query PDF, Extract Text, Convert to PDF, PDF to Images, Convert to PDF/A, Convert to PDF/X, Compress PDF, Linearize PDF, Flatten Forms, Flatten Transparencies, Flatten Annotations, Flatten Layers, Merge PDFs, Split PDF, Encrypt PDF, Decrypt PDF, Restrict PDF, Watermark PDF, Import Form Data, Export Form Data, Convert PDF Colors, OCR PDF, API Polling, Upload Files, Zip Files. Get up and running fast with the pdfRest Postman Collection or start from functional sample code in .NET, JavaScript, Python, PHP, and cURL from the pdfRest GitHub repository. Gold-standard processing powered by Adobe® PDF Library™ ensures the highest quality results. Free to get started with no commitment.
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    Starting Price: $0 per month
  • 3
    ComPDFKit PDF SDK

    ComPDFKit PDF SDK

    PDF Technologies, Inc.

    ComPDFKit PDF SDK offers a top-quality PDF SDK and PDF API for developers or companies. It allows them to integrate PDF editing, annotating, converting, form filling, digital signing, comparing, measuring, and redacting into any device. Product Details of ComPDF: - ComPDFKit PDF SDK Our PDF SDK renders PDFs at the fastest speed and provides rich and reliable functionalities including viewing, markup, content & page editing, digital & electronic signing, form filling, OCR, comparing, measuring, etc., satisfying the needs of processing PDFs in different scenarios. - ComPDFKit Conversion SDK Support Convert PDF to or from Word, Excel, PPT, TXT, RTF, PNG, JPG, HTML, JSON, markdown, searchable PDF, etc. - ComIDP ComIDP is the intelligent document processing, allow companies to integrate for unstructured data extracting, knowledge base building, AI Q&A, image pre-processing, PDF parsing, PDF data extraction, PDF table extraction, etc.
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    KDAN PDF Reader

    KDAN PDF Reader

    Kdan Mobile Software

    KDAN PDF Reader is your all-in-one PDF solution. Edit, sign, OCR scan, convert, annotate, and fill forms in PDF documents. With innovative AI features, speed up your document workflow! Designed for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, KDAN PDF Reader is trusted by millions for its comprehensive features and efficiency. **Spring Sale: Work smarter with KDAN PDF Reader—get 40% OFF Document 365 AI+, our AI-powered, cross-platform subscription. Offer ends May 8. AI FEATURE • Analyze and extract key information or tables from a PDF, then convert the data into spreadsheets for further analysis or visualization. • Chat with PDF and get document analysis, advice, new ideas, or content summary • Text redaction - automatically identify and block sensitive information in a document
    Starting Price: $59.99/year (billed annually)
  • 5
    AmindPDF

    AmindPDF

    AmindPDF

    AmindPDF's user interface is very user-friendly and makes the operation of PDF easy. It can recognize PDF text as paragraphs or whole blocks of text, allowing users to edit text directly and smoothly, like in MS Word. for PDF protection, it allows adding passwords, setting document permissions, placing signatures, adding watermarks to PDF It also supports batch operations to process files, such as merge/split tool, compression tool, creation tool, Bates numbering tool, and conversion tool, so users can process multiple PDF files at once. AmindPDF is available for a number of platforms: Windows, iOS, and Android. Users are able to use the same PDF tool on a computer or mobile phone. So AmindPDF let you process or edit PDFs anytime, anywhere.
    Starting Price: $9.90
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    Anvil

    Anvil

    Anvil

    Anvil provides companies who require a high volume of PDFs to be filled, generated, maintained, and/or signed a customizable, embedded, logic-based workflow platform.
    Starting Price: $0 per month
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    FPDF

    FPDF

    FPDF

    FPDF is a solution written in PHP that allows you to generate PDF documents directly from PHP, so you can use the PDFlib library. The F of FPDF means free, so you can use it for any purpose and modify it to your liking to satisfy your needs. FPDF does not need any extension for PHP (except Zlib to enable compression and GD for GIF support) and works with PHP5 (≥ 5.1), PHP7 and PHP8. The tutorials will allow you to quickly access FPDF. FPDF generates documents in many other languages apart from the Western European ones, like Central, Cyrillic, Greek and Baltic, if they have TrueType or Type1 sources with the set of appropriate characters. UTF-8 is also available. The speed of generation of a document is less than that of PDFlib. Without the resentment, however, is very reasonable and is adequate for the majority of cases, unless its documents are specifically compiled or extended.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 8
    pdfToolbox

    pdfToolbox

    callas software GmbH

    pdfToolbox offers powerful, dynamic, and easy-to-integrate PDF processing, from quick visual inspection and fixing to fully unattended processing of thousands of files. Using rock-solid Adobe technology pdfToolbox provides checking and fixing of even very complex problems, color management, impositioning, conversion to and from PDF, and more. pdfToolbox technology is used by small companies, large publishers, and print providers as well as OEMs that integrate the technology in their own solutions. pdfToolbox Desktop is a manual PDF preflight and correction application, available as a plug-in in Adobe Acrobat Pro or as a standalone application. pdfToolbox offers prepress operators an easy-to-use interface for all pre-press actions, which gets you to each action you might need in three simple steps. You can easily customize this further, so you have your favorite actions at your fingertips.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 9
    PDFlib

    PDFlib

    PDFlib

    PDFlib GmbH is completely focused on PDF technology. Customers are using our products since 1997. In 2006 we were one of the founding members of the PDF Association (formerly PDF/A Competence Center). The company closely follows development and market trends such as ISO standards for PDF. PDFlib GmbH products are distributed all over the world with major markets in Europe, North America and Japan. PDFlib is a well-established developer component for generating and manipulating PDF documents. PDFlib’s main targets are dynamic PDF creation on a web server and PDF creation in any kind of server, desktop or mobile application. You can use PDFlib to dynamically create PDF documents from database contents, similar to dynamic Web pages. Since 1997 PDFlib has proven itself in a wide range of use cases and development environments. Application programmers use PDFlib to create PDF output with text, images, graphics and interactive elements.
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    Vanilla.PDF

    Vanilla.PDF

    Vanilla.PDF Labs

    Vanilla.PDF is a powerful, modern, and open-source PDF processing toolkit designed to provide maximum flexibility while remaining easy to use. Whether you are building a small script or an enterprise-level application, Vanilla.PDF offers all the tools you need to create, modify, sign, and analyze PDF files with precision and efficiency. Our framework supports the entire range of PDF standards, including PDF 2.0 and archival formats such as PDF/A, as well as advanced PAdES electronic signatures with full PKCS#11 hardware token and smart card integration. This ensures compliance with the highest industry and legal standards for document authenticity and integrity. Vanilla.PDF is built with developers in mind — it offers a clean, well-documented API, accompanied by fully-featured examples that showcase practical real-world usage. This means you can integrate it into your projects quickly and reliably, with confidence that the results will meet the market’s highest expectations.
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