head to head · open source
lerna vs PyMuPDF
lerna has 36,053 GitHub stars, 2,265 forks, 287 open issues and last shipped yesterday. PyMuPDF has 10,732 stars, 798 forks, 58 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lerna leads on adoption by 236% (36,053 vs 10,732 stars). lerna is written in TypeScript under MIT; PyMuPDF is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. lerna has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, PyMuPDF 7%. lerna 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
| lerna | PyMuPDF | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 36K | ★ 11K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 798 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick lerna if
- You weight community size — 36K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick PyMuPDF if
- You want the PyMuPDF feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and PyMuPDF fits your workflow better
About lerna
Lerna is a fast, modern build system for managing and publishing multiple JavaScript/TypeScript packages from the same repository, aimed at teams that maintain monorepos and publish packages to npm.
read the full lerna overview →
About PyMuPDF
PyMuPDF is a high performance Python library, built on the MuPDF C engine, for extracting, analysing, converting, rendering and manipulating PDF and other documents, aimed at Python developers building data extraction, document processing and AI retrieval pipelines.
read the full PyMuPDF overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lerna or PyMuPDF more popular?
lerna has 36,053 GitHub stars and PyMuPDF has 10,732. lerna has the larger community by that measure.
Are lerna and PyMuPDF free?
Both are open source. lerna is licensed under MIT and PyMuPDF under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lerna and PyMuPDF?
lerna is written in TypeScript and PyMuPDF 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, lerna or PyMuPDF?
Choose lerna if you want the larger community (36,053 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose PyMuPDF if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.