head to head · open source
pdfcpu vs community
pdfcpu has 8,842 GitHub stars, 633 forks, 121 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. community has 2,416 stars, 238 forks, 46 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. pdfcpu leads on adoption by 266% (8,842 vs 2,416 stars). pdfcpu is written in Go under Apache-2.0; community is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. pdfcpu has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, community 10%. pdfcpu was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (go), 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
| pdfcpu | community | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.8K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-05-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 633 | ⑂ 238 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick pdfcpu if
- You weight community size — 8.8K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick community if
- You want the community feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and community fits your workflow better
About pdfcpu
pdfcpu is a PDF processing library and command line tool written in Go. It lives in the Go and Golang ecosystem, is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, and is listed under Business Software in the Document Management and E Signatures category. The project has existed for nine years, carries 8,835 stars and 628 forks, and lists 121 open issues. Its maintainer, Horst Rutter, is a member of the PDF Association, and the project documentation lives at pdfcpu.io. The GitHub topics attached to the repository are cli, go, golang, golang library, pdf, pdf files, and pdf tools, which describes both halves of what the…
read the full pdfcpu overview →
About community
Documize Community is an open source knowledge management and documentation platform designed as a modern Confluence alternative for internal and external documentation. It is built with a Go backend and an EmberJS frontend, and it lives in the open source documentation and knowledge management ecosystem.
read the full community overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is pdfcpu or community more popular?
pdfcpu has 8,842 GitHub stars and community has 2,416. pdfcpu has the larger community by that measure.
Are pdfcpu and community free?
Both are open source. pdfcpu is licensed under Apache-2.0 and community under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between pdfcpu and community?
pdfcpu is written in Go and community in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, pdfcpu or community?
Choose pdfcpu if you want the larger community (8,842 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose community if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.