head to head · open source
Documenso vs pdfcpu
Documenso has 15,633 GitHub stars, 3,432 forks, 238 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pdfcpu has 8,895 stars, 644 forks, 121 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Documenso leads on adoption by 76% (15,633 vs 8,895 stars). Documenso is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; pdfcpu is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Documenso has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, pdfcpu 7%. 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 | pdfcpu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 8.9K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 644 |
| 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 pdfcpu if
- You want the pdfcpu feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and pdfcpu 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 pdfcpu
pdfcpu: PDF tooling for Go and the command line pdfcpu is a PDF processing library and command line tool written in Go. It supports validation, optimization, encryption, signing, document assembly, content extraction, and other common PDF operations. pdfcpu supports PDF versions through PDF 2.0 (ISO 32000 2). PDF 2.0 validation support is basic and continuously improving. Horst Rutter, the maintainer of pdfcpu, is a member of the PDF Association. Installation Usage CLI Validate a PDF: Merge two PDFs: Go API See API documentation for usage examples. Features Validate, optimize, split, trim, and merge PDFs Extract…
read the full pdfcpu overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Documenso or pdfcpu more popular?
Documenso has 15,633 GitHub stars and pdfcpu has 8,895. Documenso has the larger community by that measure.
Are Documenso and pdfcpu free?
Both are open source. Documenso is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and pdfcpu under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Documenso and pdfcpu?
Documenso is written in TypeScript and pdfcpu in Go. 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 pdfcpu?
Choose Documenso if you want the larger community (15,633 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pdfcpu if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.