head to head · open source
Docuseal vs papermerge-core
Docuseal has 18,979 GitHub stars, 1,933 forks, 121 open issues and last shipped yesterday. papermerge-core has 551 stars, 115 forks, 36 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Docuseal leads on adoption by 3,344% (18,979 vs 551 stars). Docuseal is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; papermerge-core is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Docuseal has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, papermerge-core 21%. Docuseal was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (documents, 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
| Docuseal | papermerge-core | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 19K | ★ 551 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 115 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Docuseal if
- You weight community size — 19K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- 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 Docuseal
DocuSeal Open source document filling and signing DocuSeal is an open source platform that provides secure and efficient digital document signing and processing. Create PDF forms to have them filled and signed online on any device with an easy to use, mobile optimized web tool. ✨ Live Demo ☁️ Try in Cloud Features PDF form fields builder (WYSIWYG) 12 field types available (Signature, Date, File, Checkbox etc.) Multiple submitters per document Automated emails via SMTP Files storage on disk or AWS S3, Google Storage, Azure Cloud Automatic PDF eSignature PDF signature verification Users management Mobile optimized…
read the full Docuseal 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 Docuseal or papermerge-core more popular?
Docuseal has 18,979 GitHub stars and papermerge-core has 551. Docuseal has the larger community by that measure.
Are Docuseal and papermerge-core free?
Both are open source. Docuseal is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and papermerge-core under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Docuseal and papermerge-core?
Docuseal is written in Ruby 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, Docuseal or papermerge-core?
Choose Docuseal if you want the larger community (18,979 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.