head to head · open source
Documenso vs papermerge-core
Documenso has 15,062 GitHub stars, 3,225 forks, 238 open issues and last shipped yesterday. papermerge-core has 539 stars, 110 forks, 36 open issues and last shipped 13 days ago. Documenso leads on adoption by 2,694% (15,062 vs 539 stars). Documenso is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; papermerge-core is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Documenso has attracted 21% as many forks as stars, papermerge-core 20%. 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 | ★ 15K | ★ 539 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 110 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Documenso if
- You weight community size — 15K 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
Documenso is open source document signing software. It lives in business software ecosystem, specifically document management and e signatures. Project calls itself open source DocuSign alternative. It provides digital signing for PDF documents. It is written in TypeScript. It is licensed under AGPL 3.0. Repository shows 15014 stars, 3207 forks, 238 open issues, last push 2026 09 14.
read the full Documenso overview →
About papermerge-core
Papermerge DMS (papermerge core) is the open source core of Papermerge, a document management system in Python that OCRs scanned documents, indexes them, and makes them searchable for anyone who needs a long term digital archive rather than a folder full of loose files.
read the full papermerge-core overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Documenso or papermerge-core more popular?
Documenso has 15,062 GitHub stars and papermerge-core has 539. 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 (15,062 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.