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Open-Source PDF Software Capable of Decrypting PDFs

Decrypt, remove password protection, or open password-protected PDFs

29 tools

Perl

CAM::PDF

Library

Perl module (PDF 1.0–1.5) for reading and writing PDFs: extract/delete/duplicate pages, get page text/content trees, append/prepend pages from other PDFs, handle password-protected documents and permissions, list/add fonts, list/fill form fields, remove annotations, detect linearized PDFs, remove unused objects, and apply compression filters.

Tested
Stale
OCaml

Coherent PDF (cpdf)

Cli

Command-line PDF manipulation toolkit: split, merge, and extract pages while preserving bookmarks; encrypt/decrypt (AES 128/256); scale, rotate, crop, and flip pages; stamp text, watermarks, and page numbers; manage annotations, metadata, and file attachments; rasterize pages to images; and produce PDF/UA-tagged output.

Tested
Perl

Image::ExifTool::PDF

Library

Component of Image::ExifTool that reads metadata from PDF files, including support for PDF-1.5 object streams (limited Filter/Predictor algorithms) and all standard PDF encryption methods through PDF-2.0 (including AESV2/AES-128 and AESV3/AES-256).

Java

Images To PDF

Gui

Android PDF toolkit centered on creating PDFs from camera or gallery images (plus converting plain text files to PDF), alongside managing existing PDFs: merge, split, compress, remove/rearrange/rotate pages, extract images, and encrypt/decrypt. Aimed at the common mobile use case of turning photographed documents or receipts into a shareable PDF, with the page-management tools included as a secondary, more general-purpose capability.

Ruby

Origami

Cli

Pure-Ruby framework for parsing, modifying, and creating PDF files, with lazy on-demand parsing: compression filters with predictors, RC4/AES encryption (including Revision 6), digital signatures and usage rights, file attachments, AcroForm/XFA forms, and object streams. Ships CLI tools including `pdfcop` for detecting dangerous PDF content (not a full malware-analysis/forensics suite by the author's own description) plus decompression, decryption, encryption, resource-extraction, and metadata-inspection utilities.

Stale
Go

pdf

Library

Go package (rsc.io/pdf) for reading PDF files: opens (optionally password-encrypted) files, reads the page tree, outline/bookmarks, per-page fonts and their metrics, and low-level page content (text runs and drawn rectangles) via a low-level Value/object API. A known unpatched stack-overflow DoS vulnerability is reported against it (GO-2026-5781).

DepreciatedStale
PHP

pdf-to-image

DriverLibrary

Converts PDFs to JPG, JPEG, PNG, or WebP images via ImageMagick and Ghostscript under the hood: render specific pages or all of them, control output quality/DPI/dimensions/background color, read page count and page dimensions, and handle password-protected PDFs. Requires ImageMagick 7 specifically (not the older ImageMagick 6 many systems still ship), since it relies on API changes introduced in that major version.

PHP

pdf-to-text

Cli

Thin PHP wrapper around the `pdftotext` CLI binary (from Poppler) that extracts text from a PDF, with support for a custom binary path, password-protected PDFs, and passthrough of `pdftotext`'s own options (e.g. layout preservation). Requires `pdftotext` installed as a system binary — this package is purely a PHP-friendly API over it, not an independent text-extraction implementation.

Haskell

pdf-toolbox

Library

Haskell PDF library supporting on-demand/streaming parsing (without loading the whole file into memory) at both high-level (catalog, page tree, pages) and low-level (xref, trailer, objects, incl. xref/object streams) abstraction; extracts text with exact glyph positions; supports incremental-update editing, basic PDF generation, and partial support for encrypted documents.

Python

pdf2image

Library

Wraps Poppler's `pdftoppm`/`pdftocairo` to convert PDFs (whole documents or page ranges) into PIL Image objects: PPM/JPEG/PNG output, multi-threaded batch conversion, grayscale mode, custom sizing, and password-protected PDF support.

Stale
Go

pdfcpu

CliLibrary

Go PDF processor (CLI + library) supporting PDF up to 2.0 (ISO 32000-2): validate, optimize, split, trim, and merge PDFs; encrypt/decrypt; resize, rotate, and crop pages; extract/manipulate images, fonts, and metadata; manage attachments and portfolios; validate, report, and remove digital signatures; add/remove stamps and watermarks; process forms, bookmarks, and annotations; and generate booklets, N-up/N-down layouts, grids, and posters.

Tested
JavaScript

pdfh5

Plugin

Framework-agnostic (with Vue/React support) web PDF preview plugin built on PDF.js: touch gestures (pinch-zoom, double-tap, scrolling), selectable/searchable text layer, annotations (highlights, freetext, ink, stamps, signatures), password-protected PDF support, page caching for large files, print support, and a sandbox mode blocking JS injection/XSS.

Python

PDFMiner

Library

Original PDFMiner: text extraction with location, font, and size data, layout analysis for reconstructing reading order from a page's raw content stream, format conversion to HTML/XML, table-of-contents/outline extraction, RC4/AES decryption, and multi-font/CJK text support. Python 2-only and unmaintained since its author moved on; fully superseded by the community-maintained Pdfminer.six fork, which carries the same core engine forward with Python 3 support and active development.

DepreciatedStale
Python

Pdfminer.six

Library

Pure-Python PDF-1.7 parser/extraction library: text, images, HTML, or hOCR output with exact text location/font/color data; AcroForm and tagged-content extraction; outline/TOC extraction; embedded image extraction (JPG, PNG, TIFF, JBIG2, bitmaps); CJK and vertical-writing support; Type1/TrueType/Type3/CID fonts; RC4/AES decryption; and decoding of ASCIIHex/ASCII85/LZW/Flate/RunLength/CCITTFax compression filters.

Tested
C#

PdfPig

Library

C# port of Apache PDFBox for reading and extracting content from PDFs: text, individual words and letters (with position and font data), images, annotations, hyperlinks, embedded files, and bookmarks, plus layout/reading-order analysis for reconstructing a page's visual structure. Also supports basic PDF creation, merging multiple files, read-only inspection of AcroForm fields, and opening password-protected documents. A pure-.NET alternative to shelling out to a native PDF binary.

Python

pdfplumber

Library

Extracts text (with layout preservation, tolerance settings, regex search, and word bounding boxes), detects and extracts tables (via ruling-line or text-alignment strategies), and provides low-level access to characters, lines, rectangles, curves, images, annotations, hyperlinks, and form fields, with page cropping/filtering, password-protected PDF support, and visual debugging (page-to-image rendering with overlay annotations, incl. Jupyter display). Does not generate, modify, or OCR PDFs.

Tested
Java

PDFtk Server

Cli

Command-line tool to merge, split, and rotate PDFs; fill forms with FDF/XFDF data and flatten them (or generate an FDF stencil from a form's fields); encrypt and decrypt with passwords; add watermarks and stamps; manage bookmarks, metadata, and attachments; repair damaged PDFs; and recompress page streams. The Java-rewritten 'Server' edition of the classic PDFtk command-line tool, maintaining the same CLI interface and command syntax as the original.

Tested
Python

pikepdf

Library

Pythonic wrapper around qpdf for reading, writing, and manipulating PDFs: merge, split, rotate, rearrange, and delete pages; read/write XMP and DocumentInfo metadata (auto-synced); losslessly extract or replace embedded images (preserving original JPEG compression); open password-protected files and save with RC4, AES-128, or AES-256 encryption (or remove it); linearize for 'fast web view'; direct object-level/content-stream access; automatic repair on open; access to qpdf's Job API; and Jupyter notebook preview rendering.

Python

pypdf

Library

Pure-Python PDF library: split, merge, crop, and transform pages; add passwords/encryption and decrypt (with optional AES support); read and add metadata; extract text; read and create annotations; and attach custom data/viewer settings. Companion CLI tool `pdfly` offers additional command-line operations.

Python

pyPdf

Library

Original pure-Python PDF manipulation library: reading, merging, cropping, and rotating pages, encryption/decryption, and text extraction — the ancestor codebase that both PyPDF2 and, eventually, today's pypdf were built from. The project's own page states it is 'no longer updated,' with its last release dating to December 2012; kept here for historical completeness rather than as something to newly adopt.

DepreciatedStale
C++

qpdf

Library

Low-level, content-preserving PDF structure tool: linearizes PDFs for fast web view, encrypts and decrypts, splits and merges files, inspects and edits PDF object structure directly, and repairs damaged files without altering actual page content. Explicitly does not render pages or extract text — its own documentation is clear this is a structural transformation tool, not a content-reading one, and points elsewhere (e.g. the `pdftools` R package) for extraction needs.

Tested
JavaScript

react-native-pdf

GuiPlugin

React Native PDF viewer component: loads PDFs from URLs, local files, assets, blob data, or base64 (with optional caching); page jumping, page-by-page or continuous scrolling, pinch/double-tap zoom, and password-protected PDF handling. Uses PDFKit on iOS, PDFium on Android, and a native implementation on Windows; also supports Expo via a config plugin.

JavaScript

React-PDF

Library

Displays existing PDFs in React apps (built on PDF.js): renders pages via `<Document>`/`<Page>` with canvas, custom, or no rendering; shows outline/table of contents and thumbnails; selectable text and annotation/link layers; form rendering; page rotation and zoom; password-protected PDF handling; JPEG2000 and non-Latin (cMap) support. (Complementary to @react-pdf/renderer, which creates PDFs rather than displaying them.)

Objective-C

Skim

Gui

Open-source (BSD) macOS PDF reader and note-taker for reading and annotating scientific papers: adding/editing notes and highlights (with one-swipe highlighting), exporting notes as text, TOC/thumbnail navigation with visual history, full-screen presentation mode with transitions, snapshots, bookmarks, Spotlight search, LaTeX/SyncTeX/PDFSync integration, BibDesk compatibility, Keychain-saved passwords, and extensive AppleScript support.

Java

tabula-java

CliLibrary

Table-extraction library (powers the Tabula tool) that pulls tabular data out of PDFs using lattice mode (ruled cell borders) or stream mode (no borders), exporting to CSV, TSV, or JSON; usable as a CLI for batch processing or as a Java API, with support for selective pages, custom extraction areas, and password-protected files.

Tested
JavaScript

textract

CliDriverLibrary

Node.js module (CLI + API) that extracts text from HTML, PDF, DOC/DOCX, ODT, RTF, XLS/XLSX/XLSB/XLSM, CSV, ODS, PPTX/ODP, XML, Markdown, EPUB, and image formats (PNG/JPG/GIF via Tesseract OCR); wraps external tools (pdftotext, antiword, tesseract, unrtf) and supports password-protected PDFs and configurable OCR language.

Stale
Go

uniDoc

Library

Comprehensive Go PDF toolkit for reading, writing, and processing PDFs: text/image/table extraction, merging/splitting/rotating/rearranging pages, form creation and filling, encryption/decryption, digital signing, watermarking, and image-to-PDF conversion.

DepreciatedStale
Go

UniPDF

Library

Go PDF library (pure Go): generates reports/invoices with styled text and tables; creates and fills forms; merges, splits, reorders, and rotates pages (incl. N-up layouts); extracts text (with position/formatting), images, and tabular data to CSV; adds/converts images to PDF; removes or adds password protection; validates and applies digital signatures; compresses/optimizes files; adds watermarks; and supports CCITTFax/JBIG2 image decoding.

JavaScript

vue-pdf

Library

Vue 2 component for displaying PDFs from URLs, file paths, or binary data: page navigation, 90°-increment rotation, password-protected PDF handling, per-page or range printing, load-progress tracking, text extraction/selection, clickable internal links, and rendering multiple page instances at once.

Stale