Free · open source · self-host or run offline
Open-Source PDF Converter: The 7 Best Free & Self-Hosted Tools of 2026
Quick answer The best open-source PDF converter in 2026 is Stirling-PDF if you can self-host (50+ tools, Docker) and BentoPDF if you want it to run in the browser with nothing uploaded. PdfCraft, new in 2026 and MIT/Apache-licensed, is the best open-source desktop app for organising, merging and splitting PDFs. For simple jobs with no install at all, the free no-upload converter on our homepage is built on the same open-source engines.
Until recently, "open-source PDF converter" meant command-line tools and a handful of Linux desktop apps. That changed in 2025–2026: Stirling-PDF crossed 90,000 GitHub stars, BentoPDF proved a full toolkit can run client-side, and PdfCraft arrived with a Rust engine that compiles to both native apps and WebAssembly. This page compares the seven projects worth your time and says plainly what each cannot do. It complements our main guide to every PDF converter online, free and paid.
| Project | Licence | Runs | PDF → Word / images | OCR | Stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PdfCraft | MIT / Apache-2.0 | Desktop + browser (WASM) | No | Partial (Latin) | ≈17k |
| Stirling-PDF | Open-core | Self-hosted web, desktop | Yes | Yes | ≈95k |
| BentoPDF | AGPL-3.0 / $79 | Browser, client-side | Yes | Yes | ≈16k |
| PDF Arranger | GPL-3.0 | Desktop | No | No | ≈6k |
| LibreOffice | MPL-2.0 | Desktop + CLI | Word only (basic) | No | — |
| pdfcpu | Apache-2.0 | CLI | Images (extract) | No | ≈9k |
| qpdf | Apache-2.0 | CLI | No | No | — |
1. PdfCraft
PdfCraft is the reason this page exists. Released by the ArtCraft team in 2026 and written from scratch in Rust, it collected around 17,000 GitHub stars within weeks and reached v0.4.0 on October 8, 2026. It is a reader and an editor: careful typography and tiled deep zoom for viewing, plus page organising (rotate, delete, insert, move), merging, extracting and splitting, AES-256 password protection, forms, threaded comments, optional-content layers and attachments. A ⌘K command palette and undo/redo make it feel like a modern app rather than a utility.
Two things set it apart from every other project here. First, the same code base builds native desktop apps and a static WebAssembly site you can host anywhere, so "install it" and "use it online with no upload" are the same product. Second, it is dual-licensed MIT or Apache-2.0 — the most permissive terms on this list — and ships a CLI and an opt-in MCP server so AI agents can drive the engine.
Limits: the project calls itself alpha. Editing existing text, OCR beyond Latin scripts and conversion to Word are not there yet, and the web build drops a few desktop-only features. For converting PDFs to other formats you still need Stirling-PDF, BentoPDF or LibreOffice.
2. Stirling-PDF
With roughly 95,000 GitHub stars, Stirling-PDF is the most popular self-hosted PDF platform by a wide margin. One docker run -p 8080:8080 docker.stirlingpdf.com/stirlingtools/stirling-pdf gives you a web interface with 50+ tools: convert to and from Word, images and HTML, merge, split, compress, OCR (Tesseract), sign, redact, watermark, repair and automate pipelines — plus a private API for your own software.
It is the answer when a company wants an "online" PDF converter that never sends documents to a third party: the server is yours, so the files are too. The project moved to an open-core model, with some enterprise features (SSO, audit tooling) in a paid tier; the community edition still covers everything a typical team converts.
Limits: it needs a server or a desktop install, and the Docker image is large because it bundles LibreOffice, Tesseract and other engines.
3. BentoPDF
BentoPDF (about 16,000 stars) takes the opposite architecture to Stirling-PDF: every operation runs in the visitor's browser, with no server-side processing at all. Its README lists 50+ tools (the feature tables run past 100 entries) across organising, editing, converting to and from PDF, and security; heavier jobs use WebAssembly builds of PyMuPDF, Ghostscript and CoherentPDF that load from a CDN on demand. The hosted version at bentopdf.com is free; self-hosting is a static dist folder.
This is the same approach as the no-upload converter on our homepage — which is why we rank BentoPDF first among the options for anyone who wants more tools than ours without giving up privacy.
Limits: the AGPL requires you to publish your source if you modify and host it, so businesses usually buy the $79 commercial licence; a few features (digital signatures) need a small proxy you deploy yourself.
4. PDF Arranger
A small Python/GTK application (about 6,000 stars) that shows every page of your PDFs as a thumbnail so you can drag them between documents to merge, split, rotate, crop and reorder. It is a front end for the pikepdf library (which wraps qpdf), installs from Flathub, the Snap Store, or as Windows and macOS builds, and is the tool to hand to a relative who finds Stirling-PDF intimidating.
Limits: organising only — no conversion to Word, images or text, and no OCR.
5. LibreOffice
LibreOffice is the most reliable open-source route to PDF. Writer, Calc and Impress export to PDF or archival PDF/A with tagged, accessible output, and soffice --headless --convert-to pdf *.docx batch-converts an entire folder — which is exactly what Stirling-PDF calls internally. Opening a PDF in LibreOffice Draw lets you edit text and export again.
Limits: PDF-to-Word fidelity is modest on complex layouts; it is an office suite, not a PDF toolkit.
6. pdfcpu
A single-binary CLI and Go library (about 8,900 stars) that merges, splits, validates, optimises, encrypts and decrypts PDFs, stamps text or image watermarks, adds page numbers, and extracts images, fonts and metadata. No dependencies, so it slots into scripts, CI pipelines and servers where a web interface would be overkill.
Limits: no GUI and no conversion to Word or images.
7. qpdf
qpdf is the structural toolkit many other projects are built on, including pikepdf and PDF Arranger. It linearises PDFs for fast web viewing, repairs damaged files, splits and merges pages, and adds or removes encryption — all without re-rendering the content, so nothing is lost. It is packaged in every Linux distribution and in Homebrew.
Limits: command line only; it transforms PDFs rather than converting them to other formats.
How to choose
- You want an online converter that never uploads your file: BentoPDF, or ours for the nine most common jobs.
- You run a team and want everything on your own server: Stirling-PDF.
- You want a desktop app to read, organise and merge PDFs offline: PdfCraft (modern, alpha) or PDF Arranger (simple, mature).
- You need Office files turned into PDFs in bulk: LibreOffice headless.
- You are scripting: pdfcpu for everyday operations, qpdf for repair, linearisation and encryption.
- You need Acrobat-level PDF-to-Word fidelity: no open-source tool matches it yet — see the ranked commercial converters.
Open-source PDF converter FAQ
What is the best open-source PDF converter?
For most people in 2026 it is a toss-up between Stirling-PDF (the most tools, self-hosted with Docker) and BentoPDF (50+ tools that run entirely in the browser, nothing uploaded). PdfCraft is the best open-source desktop app for organising, merging and splitting PDFs offline, LibreOffice is the best free way to turn Office files into PDF, and pdfcpu or qpdf are the right choice for scripts.
Is there an open-source PDF converter that runs in the browser?
Yes. BentoPDF (AGPL-3.0) runs every operation client-side at bentopdf.com or on your own static host, PdfCraft ships a WebAssembly build of its Rust engine, and the free converter on PDFConverterOnline.com is built on Mozilla's open-source pdf.js and pdf-lib and never uploads a file.
Is Stirling-PDF still open source?
Stirling-PDF now describes itself as open-core: the community edition remains free and open with 50+ tools, while some enterprise features are sold separately. Check the LICENSE file in the repository before deploying commercially.
Can an open-source tool convert PDF to Word?
Stirling-PDF and BentoPDF both offer PDF-to-Word conversion using open-source engines (LibreOffice under the hood in Stirling's case). Fidelity on complex layouts is below Adobe Acrobat; for text, paragraphs and headings they are fine. PdfCraft and PDF Arranger do not convert to Word.
Which open-source PDF converter should I self-host for my company?
Stirling-PDF: one docker run command, 50+ tools, a private API, user management and no third-party processing. If you only need client-side tools and want zero server load, host BentoPDF's static build instead (AGPL, or $79 commercial licence).
How this list was made
We read each project's repository, licence and README on October 22, 2026, recorded release versions and star counts from GitHub that day, and checked every claim about what a tool can and cannot do against its own documentation. Nothing in this section is sponsored and none of the links are affiliate links; our full methodology and affiliate disclosure apply site-wide. Project names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.