34 tools
Java library and CLI toolset covering PDF creation from scratch (with embedded fonts and images), Unicode text extraction, splitting and merging, form field extraction and filling, PDF/A-1b validation via its Preflight module, rendering pages to PNG/JPEG, printing via the Java printing API, and digital signing. The de facto standard Java PDF library, used as the underlying engine behind numerous other tools in this directory (PDFsam, PDFLayoutTextStripper, PdfBox-Android, and more).
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.
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.
Pure-Ruby (no external dependencies) library to merge PDFs, extract and recombine specific pages, overlay watermarks/stamps (e.g. logos), and add customizable page numbering; parses PDFs from files, memory, or remote sources. The maintainer has stepped back from active maintenance and is seeking a new steward.
Free, portable utility for splitting and merging PDF files, distributed as a reusable library, a console tool, and a GUI — pick whichever interface fits a given workflow. Also converts JPG images directly into PDF pages. Requires no installation, running as a self-contained portable executable, which is its main draw over heavier split/merge alternatives in the same niche.
PDF library and CLI (positioned as a pdftk/Poppler-utils alternative): creates PDFs from scratch with vector drawing, JPEG/PNG/PDF image embedding, and TrueType text with subsetting; a high-level document composition engine (automatic layout, text flow, page breaks, lists, multi-column, reusable styles); modifies and merges existing PDFs; creates AcroForms with Adobe-like appearances; adds annotations, outlines, and file attachments; extracts metadata/text/images/files; encrypts (incl. PDF 2.0 AES-256) and digitally signs; and optimizes file size with object validation.
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.
JavaCreate and manipulate PDFs, merge documents, digitally sign, create and fill AcroForm fields, generate PDF/A and PDF/UA archival/accessible output, encrypt (including FIPS-compliant crypto), generate barcodes, embed SVG, and redact content — the core feature set of the modern, actively-developed iText line. Separate official add-ons extend it further: pdfOCR (Tesseract- or ONNX-based optical character recognition) and pdfHTML (HTML/CSS-to-PDF conversion), both maintained by the same organization rather than third-party plugins.
CLightweight, fast C library, desktop viewer, and CLI toolset for PDF, XPS, and e-book formats, built by Artifex around the same rendering core used in Ghostscript. Renders pages and extracts text/images/metadata/structured content; creates, splits, merges, and compresses PDFs; adds annotations (highlights, stamps, shapes); permanently redacts content; and digitally signs documents. Converts between PDF, SVG, PNG, HTML, and PostScript, and embeds into web pages and native apps via its library bindings.
Small python-gtk application, which helps the user to merge or split PDF documents and rotate, crop and rearrange their pages using an interactive and intuitive graphical interface. A GUI front-end for pikepdf; can also import images into a PDF when img2pdf is installed.
JavaScriptDependency-free JavaScript library (works in browsers, Node, Deno, React Native) to create PDFs from scratch or modify existing ones: add/insert/remove/copy pages, draw text (with embedded custom fonts), images (PNG/JPEG), vector graphics and SVG paths; create and fill AcroForm fields (text, checkbox, radio, dropdown) and read/flatten them; embed pages from other PDFs, split and merge documents, add file attachments, and read/set document metadata.
Node.js and browser library that merges multiple PDF documents — or selected parts/pages of them — into a single new PDF, running in either environment from the same codebase. Built on pdf-lib rather than a native binding, so it works in browser contexts (including client-side merging with no server round-trip) where native-addon PDF libraries can't run at all.
GoGo 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.
Source code of the well-known PDFCreator from pdfforge, a free virtual-printer application: install it once and any application's own Print dialog can output directly to PDF. Supports merging and reordering pages, password and digital-signature protection, PDF/A archival compliance, custom cover pages, and automated post-processing actions (FTP upload, email delivery, custom scripting) triggered on every conversion. Widely used as a default 'print to PDF' tool on Windows.
PythonPure-Python CLI (companion to pypdf) with commands including 2-up/booklet page layout, cat (extract/merge pages), check-sign (verify signatures), compress/uncompress, extract-annotated-pages, extract-images, extract-links, extract-text, meta/pagemeta, rm (delete pages), rotate, sign, update-offsets (repair simple PDFs), and x2pdf (convert other formats to PDF pages).
PDF toolkit built around a Rust engine, exposed as native bindings for ~20 languages (Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, C#/.NET, Java, and more), a CLI, and an MCP server for AI-assistant integration: text/character-level and image extraction, form-field reading and filling, Markdown/HTML conversion with heading detection, PDF creation and editing, watermarking, merging/splitting, regex-based search, and metadata access.
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.
PythonReads and writes PDFs: subset/merge/rotate pages, modify metadata, build reusable Form XObjects, N-up and booklet layouts, watermarking (overlay/underlay), image and Form-XObject extraction, poster-sized output, and splitting 2-up PDFs; integrates with ReportLab (embedding existing PDF content into newly generated documents) and rst2pdf. No encryption/decryption support, and limited compression-filter support (external tools like pdftk needed for full decompression).
Free, cross-platform desktop app (JavaFX, self-contained with a bundled JRE since v4) for splitting, merging, mixing, rotating, and extracting pages from PDF files through a simple drag-and-drop GUI. Built around PDFBox and other open-source PDF libraries under the hood, packaging their capabilities into point-and-click tools rather than requiring command-line usage. A free, basic-operations counterpart to PDFsam's own commercial 'Enhanced' edition, which adds more advanced features.
C#Free Windows GUI front-end for the PDFtk command-line tool, exposing its operations — split, merge, stamp, add page numbers, rotate, edit metadata, manage bookmarks and attachments — through point-and-click dialogs instead of the command line. Aimed at users who want PDFtk's capabilities without writing or remembering CLI invocations, or learning PDFtk's own multi-flag command syntax for routine batch operations.
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.
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.
C++PDF rendering library and command-line suite — a fork of Xpdf that's become the de facto standard PDF engine underlying much of the open-source PDF ecosystem, powering tools like Evince, Okular, and countless downstream wrappers. Ships pdftotext, pdfimages, pdftoppm, pdftocairo, pdftohtml, pdftops, pdfinfo, pdffonts, pdfdetach, pdfattach, pdfseparate, pdfunite, and pdfsig, covering text/image extraction, page rendering, format conversion, metadata, attachments, and signature verification.
Python bindings for MuPDF covering text extraction (plain, rich dictionary with font/size/color/bbox, HTML/XML, raw blocks, table-to-Markdown); embedded image extraction and high-DPI page rendering to Pixmaps; Tesseract-based OCR (100+ languages); reading/writing annotations (highlights, notes, stamps, ink) and redactions (with permanent apply); AcroForm reading and filling; page insert/delete/reorder, merge/split, and metadata editing; PDF creation and Markdown-to-PDF conversion; password protection/RC4/AES encryption; hyperlink and cross-reference handling; and outline/bookmark read-write.
PythonPure-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.
PythonOriginal 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.
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.
R bindings for the qpdf C++ library, exposing content-preserving PDF transformations from R: splitting, combining/merging, and compressing PDF files (e.g. `pdf_compress()`). Does not read PDF content itself — the maintainers point to the 'pdftools' R package for text/data extraction.
C#Fluent-API PDF generation library for .NET: page layout, headers/footers, tables, columns, sections, watermarks, text/fonts/colors/backgrounds/borders, images, SVG, alignment/padding/scaling/rotation/layering, loops/conditionals/reusable components for data-driven documents, merging, encryption, metadata, page extraction, and PDF/A, PDF/UA, and EN 16931 (e-invoicing) compliance.
JavaScriptNode.js wrapper around PDFtk, Ghostscript, and ImageMagick for PDF manipulation: split/select/reorder/reverse pages, filter even/odd pages, join multiple PDFs, rotate (90/180/270/360°), crop (noted as unreliable), extract text and embedded images, extract metadata/properties, and render pages to PNG at a given DPI.
PHP wrapper around wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltoimage that generates PDFs or image snapshots/thumbnails from URLs or HTML, merges multiple URLs into a single PDF, supports XSL-based tables of contents, and passes through wkhtmltox options (page size, margins, cookies, JS); includes Symfony, Laravel, and Zend Framework integrations.
JavaSelf-hostable PDF toolkit with 50+ tools: edit, merge, split, sign, redact, and convert PDFs; OCR scanned pages; compress files; validate signatures; apply watermarks; and automate workflows via no-code pipelines, a REST API, and webhooks. Offered as a browser-based UI, desktop client, or self-hosted server (incl. air-gapped deployment).
GoComprehensive 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.
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.