head to head · open source
KillerPDF vs xleak
KillerPDF has 4,289 GitHub stars, 342 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped yesterday. xleak has 1,514 stars, 67 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. KillerPDF leads on adoption by 183% (4,289 vs 1,514 stars). KillerPDF is written in C# under GPL-3.0; xleak is written in Rust under MIT. KillerPDF has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, xleak 4%. KillerPDF was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| KillerPDF | xleak | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 4.3K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | C# | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 342 | ⑂ 67 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick KillerPDF if
- You weight community size — 4.3K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick xleak if
- You want the xleak feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and xleak fits your workflow better
About KillerPDF
KillerPDF is a free, open source PDF editor for Windows. View, annotate, OCR, merge, split, edit text, draw, sign, fill forms, print, flatten, and open password protected PDFs without an Adobe subscription. Choose the compact Windows installer or the self contained portable edition. Document processing stays on your computer, with no telemetry. Full how tos live on the help page; internals, formats, and limits on the technical page. The KillerPDF.Engine KillerPDF 1.8 introduces The KillerPDF.Engine, an independent and reusable .NET library for PDF 2.0, PDF/A, and PDF/UA document processing. It is a first class…
read the full KillerPDF overview →
About xleak
xleak Expose Excel files in your terminal no Microsoft Excel required! Inspired by doxx, xleak brings Excel spreadsheets to your command line with beautiful rendering, powerful export capabilities, and a feature rich interactive TUI. Features Core Functionality Beautiful terminal rendering with formatted tables Interactive TUI mode full keyboard navigation with ratatui Smart data type handling numbers right aligned, text left aligned, booleans centered Multi sheet support seamlessly navigate between sheets (Tab/Shift+Tab) Excel Table support list and extract named tables (.xlsx only) Multiple export formats CSV…
read the full xleak overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is KillerPDF or xleak more popular?
KillerPDF has 4,289 GitHub stars and xleak has 1,514. KillerPDF has the larger community by that measure.
Are KillerPDF and xleak free?
Both are open source. KillerPDF is licensed under GPL-3.0 and xleak under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between KillerPDF and xleak?
KillerPDF is written in C# and xleak in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, KillerPDF or xleak?
Choose KillerPDF if you want the larger community (4,289 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose xleak if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.