PDFsam Basic
The veteran open-source PDF plumber: split, merge, mix, rotate, and extract since 2006.
About
PDFsam Basic, short for PDF Split and Merge, has been doing one job since 2006: the mechanical page-level operations on PDFs that office suites handle badly. Merge whole documents or page ranges, split by page numbers, bookmarks, or file size, interleave two documents page by page for single-sided scans, rotate, and extract pages. It is a Java desktop app that runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and version 6.0.5 shipped in August 2026, so it is very much alive.
The code is open source under AGPLv3, with the repository at torakiki/pdfsam holding around 4,600 stars and commits within the last two weeks of October 2026. It is deliberately narrow: this is not an editor, there is no text editing, conversion, or OCR, and the freemium model means the free version nudges you toward the paid Enhanced edition with popups. For pure split and merge work that stays on your machine, it remains the default recommendation.
What it can do
- Merge PDFs with page-range selection, TOC generation, and bookmark handling
- Split by page numbers, even/odd pages, every n pages, bookmarks, or size
- Mix: interleave pages from two PDFs in straight or reverse order
- Rotate selected pages by 90, 180, or 270 degrees
- Extract single pages or page ranges into new documents
- Save and restore workspaces for repeatable jobs
- Cross-platform desktop app, free for personal and commercial use
Setup
Download the installer for Windows, macOS, or Linux from pdfsam.org (or the portable ZIP), install, and pick a module.
Prerequisites
64-bit Windows, macOS, or Linux with Java bundled in the installer. No account needed.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 8/10
Scored 8/10 (verified tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: GitHub API confirms 4,623 stars under AGPL-3.0 with a push on 2026-10-02; Wikipedia documents the 2006 origin, Java/JavaFX stack, and 6.0.5 stable release; TechSpot confirms the module set and cross-platform installers. Strengths: focused, reliable, genuinely free for commercial use, still actively maintained after nearly two decades. Docked for: (1) narrow scope with no editing, conversion, or OCR; (2) the freemium model shows upsell popups for the paid edition; (3) no published benchmarks. License: AGPL-3.0.
★ 4,623 GitHub stars
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 8.0/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 9.0/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 10.0/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 8.0/10
- · Andrea Vacondio; free and open source since 2006
- · torakiki/pdfsam: ~4,623 stars, pushed 2026-10-02; v6.0.5 stable Aug 2026
- · Merge with page-range selection, TOC generation, bookmark handling
- · Split by pages, even/odd, every n pages, bookmarks, or file size
- · Mix (interleave pages), rotate, extract pages; workspace save/restore
- · Java desktop app for Windows, macOS, Linux (64-bit)
- · Narrow scope: no text editing, conversion, or OCR
- · Freemium model shows upsell popups for the paid Enhanced edition
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.