Stirling PDF
The self-hosted PDF Swiss Army knife: 100+ tools that never send your files anywhere.
About
Stirling PDF is the open-source answer to the privacy problem with online PDF tools: a self-hosted web app you run on your own machine or server, so documents never touch a third party. It packs a remarkable breadth of capability, with the project and press coverage citing well over a hundred operations covering split, merge, compress, convert, rotate, crop, OCR via Tesseract, redaction that actually removes underlying text, watermarks, digital signatures, metadata editing, form filling, document comparison, and repair. A pipeline feature chains operations into reusable automation sequences, and there is a developer API for scripting.
The project exploded in popularity, crossing 94,000 GitHub stars with commits landing daily as of October 2026, and the 2.0 line added text editing and a multi-tool workspace. Deployment is Docker-first, with native desktop installers for Windows, Mac, and Linux and Kubernetes support. The cost of the privacy is operational: you install and maintain it yourself, and heavy OCR or large batch jobs need a reasonably specced host. No independent benchmarks of processing speed are published.
What it can do
- 100+ PDF operations: merge, split, compress, convert, rotate, crop, reorder
- Tesseract OCR in dozens of languages for scanned documents
- True redaction that removes underlying text, not just visual cover
- Watermarks, passwords, permissions, and digital signatures
- Automation pipelines chaining OCR, compression, watermarking, and more
- Developer API for scripting and integration
- Dark mode, parallel processing, auto-rename, and custom downloads
- Self-hosted: Docker, Kubernetes, or native desktop installers
Setup
Run the Docker container (docker run -p 8080:8080 stirlingtools/stirling-pdf) or grab the native desktop installer for your OS from the releases page.
Prerequisites
Docker for the containerized install, or Windows/macOS/Linux for the desktop builds. No account; optional login can be enabled.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 9/10
Scored 9/10 (verified tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: GitHub API confirms 94,323 stars under MIT with a commit pushed 2026-10-16; MakeUseOf and XDA both tested it hands-on, confirming the 100+ tool count, Tesseract OCR, real redaction, pipelines, and Docker/desktop deployment. Strengths: unmatched breadth for a self-hosted tool, files never leave your infrastructure, explosive community momentum, genuinely free. Docked for: (1) you install, update, and maintain it yourself; (2) OCR and batch workloads need a decent host; (3) no independent benchmarks. License: MIT.
★ 94,323 GitHub stars
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 10.0/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 10.0/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 10.0/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 9.0/10
- · Stirling-Tools; ~94,323 GitHub stars; commit pushed 2026-10-16
- · Self-hosted web app: 100+ PDF operations, files never leave your infrastructure
- · Tesseract OCR in dozens of languages; true redaction removing underlying text
- · Watermarks, passwords, permissions, digital signatures, metadata editing, comparison
- · Automation pipelines chaining operations; developer API
- · Docker-first plus native desktop installers (Windows/Mac/Linux) and Kubernetes
- · 2.0 added text editing and multi-tool workspace
- · You install and maintain it yourself; no independent benchmarks
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.