head to head · open source
Documenso vs papermerge-core
Documenso has 15,633 GitHub stars, 3,432 forks, 238 open issues and last shipped yesterday. papermerge-core has 551 stars, 115 forks, 36 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Documenso leads on adoption by 2,737% (15,633 vs 551 stars). Documenso is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; papermerge-core is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Documenso has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, papermerge-core 21%. Documenso was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (pdf), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Documenso | papermerge-core | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 551 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 115 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Documenso if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick papermerge-core if
- You want the papermerge-core feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and papermerge-core fits your workflow better
About Documenso
The Open Source DocuSign Alternative. Learn more » Discord · Website · Documentation · Issues · Upcoming Releases · Roadmap About Documenso Signing documents digitally should be fast and easy and should be the best practice for every document signed worldwide. This is technically quite easy today, but it also introduces a new party to every signature: The signing tool providers. While this is not a problem in itself, it should make us think about how we want these providers of trust to work. Documenso aims to be the world's most trusted document signing tool. This trust is built by empowering you to self host…
read the full Documenso overview →
About papermerge-core
⚠️ Important Notice Papermerge DMS Open Source Core SEEKING MAINTAINERS This is the open source version of Papermerge, after 9 years of development. I'm now focusing on Papermerge Cloud (managed, SaaS version). 🔗 Join as maintainer: 🔗 Try Papermerge Cloud: The code remains available for anyone who wants to self host or contribute. Papermerge DMS or simply Papermerge is a open source document management system designed to work with scanned documents (also called digital archives). It extracts text from your scans using OCR, indexes them, and prepares them for full text search. Papermerge provides the look and…
read the full papermerge-core overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Documenso or papermerge-core more popular?
Documenso has 15,633 GitHub stars and papermerge-core has 551. Documenso has the larger community by that measure.
Are Documenso and papermerge-core free?
Both are open source. Documenso is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and papermerge-core under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Documenso and papermerge-core?
Documenso is written in TypeScript and papermerge-core in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Documenso or papermerge-core?
Choose Documenso if you want the larger community (15,633 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose papermerge-core if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.