head to head · open source
Docuseal vs pdfcpu
Docuseal has 18,979 GitHub stars, 1,933 forks, 121 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pdfcpu has 8,895 stars, 644 forks, 121 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Docuseal leads on adoption by 113% (18,979 vs 8,895 stars). Docuseal is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; pdfcpu is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Docuseal has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, pdfcpu 7%. Docuseal 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
| Docuseal | pdfcpu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 19K | ★ 8.9K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 644 |
| 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 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 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 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 Docuseal or pdfcpu more popular?
Docuseal has 18,979 GitHub stars and pdfcpu has 8,895. Docuseal has the larger community by that measure.
Are Docuseal and pdfcpu free?
Both are open source. Docuseal is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and pdfcpu under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Docuseal and pdfcpu?
Docuseal is written in Ruby 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, Docuseal or pdfcpu?
Choose Docuseal if you want the larger community (18,979 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.