Stirling-PDF — The Complete Guide: Open-Source PDF Tools on Your Office Server or Desktop
Stirling-PDF is an open-source PDF toolkit that you can install as a desktop program for Windows, macOS and Linux, or run on an office server (for example with Docker) and open from any browser on the network. The whole team gets a shared PDF tool, and files never travel to outside websites.
Stirling-PDF
Stirling PDF Inc.
Open-source PDF toolkit with dozens of tools — OCR, compare, redact, convert — as a desktop app or a self-hosted server.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Page work — merge, split, reorder, rotate and compress large sets.
- OCR — turn old drawings and scans into searchable text.
- Redact and compare — truly remove sensitive information and compare versions.
- Conversion and signing — convert between formats and sign documents.
- Automation and API — no-code chains of actions, plus a REST API for nearly every tool.
What is free and what is not
This is an open-core model: the core is MIT-licensed and free on desktop and self-hosted, including commercially. Enterprise and cloud components in the repository are under a separate proprietary licence, and paid Team and Enterprise plans add SSO and user management. The vendor’s cloud has a free plan of 1,000 credits per month — but there files are processed on its servers. A server install needs some technical skill and plenty of memory.
Related tools
For browser tools without a heavy server — BentoPDF. For batch OCR from the command line — OCRmyPDF. For repairing and compressing files in a script — qpdf.
BentoPDF
BentoPDF
Over 100 PDF tools that all run inside the browser — files are never uploaded to a server. Open source, no sign-up, no limits.
Get it from the vendor
OCRmyPDF
OCRmyPDF project
Adds a searchable text layer to scanned PDFs — old reports, standards and drawings become searchable.
Get it from the vendor
qpdf
qpdf project (Jay Berkenbilt)
Command-line tool to repair, encrypt and decrypt, merge and split PDFs and inspect file structure — without changing the content.
Get it from the vendor
PDFsam Basic
Sober Lemur
Split, merge, rotate and extract PDF pages — for drawing sets, specifications and submissions.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
The right pick for an office that wants a full PDF toolkit for every employee, on its own infrastructure and without sending project documents to any third party.