head to head · open source
pdfcpu vs papermerge-core
pdfcpu has 8,895 GitHub stars, 644 forks, 121 open issues and last shipped yesterday. papermerge-core has 551 stars, 115 forks, 36 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. pdfcpu leads on adoption by 1,514% (8,895 vs 551 stars). pdfcpu is written in Go under Apache-2.0; papermerge-core is written in Python under Apache-2.0. pdfcpu has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, papermerge-core 21%. pdfcpu 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
| pdfcpu | papermerge-core | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.9K | ★ 551 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 644 | ⑂ 115 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick pdfcpu if
- You weight community size — 8.9K 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 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 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 →
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 pdfcpu or papermerge-core more popular?
pdfcpu has 8,895 GitHub stars and papermerge-core has 551. pdfcpu has the larger community by that measure.
Are pdfcpu and papermerge-core free?
Both are open source. pdfcpu is licensed under Apache-2.0 and papermerge-core under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between pdfcpu and papermerge-core?
pdfcpu is written in Go 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, pdfcpu or papermerge-core?
Choose pdfcpu if you want the larger community (8,895 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose papermerge-core if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.