Self-hosted, open-source PDF editing platform for editing, signing, redacting, converting and automating PDFs in the browser, desktop, or via API.
20 alternatives
Best open-source alternatives to Adobe Acrobat (2026)
Looking for a free, open-source alternative to Adobe Acrobat? These 20 projects can replace it. Each one is reviewed by a human and explained in plain words, so you can compare stars, license and maintenance at a glance.
Quick comparison
| Project | Stars | License | Last commit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stirling-Tools/Stirling-PDF | ★ 94.4K | Other | 3 hours ago |
| firecrawl/anydoc | ★ 22.9K | MIT | 7 hours ago |
| firecrawl/pdf-inspector | ★ 19.7K | MIT | 11 days ago |
| alam00000/bentopdf | ★ 16.1K | AGPL-3.0 | 17 hours ago |
| run-llama/liteparse | ★ 12.9K | Apache-2.0 | 6 days ago |
| mindee/doctr | ★ 6.4K | Apache-2.0 | 2 days ago |
| freedomofpress/dangerzone | ★ 5.8K | AGPL-3.0 | 3 days ago |
| TheJoeFin/Text-Grab | ★ 5K | MIT | 27 days ago |
| SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF | ★ 4.1K | GPL-3.0 | 4 days ago |
| deepdoctection/deepdoctection | ★ 3.3K | Apache-2.0 | last month |
| CatchTheTornado/text-extract-api | ★ 3.2K | MIT | 10 months ago |
| rdumasia303/deepseek_ocr_app | ★ 1.9K | MIT | 7 months ago |
| NanoNets/docstrange | ★ 1.6K | MIT | 12 months ago |
| huridocs/pdf-document-layout-analysis | ★ 1.4K | Apache-2.0 | 13 days ago |
| Aryan-Raj3112/episteme | ★ 1.3K | AGPL-3.0 | 9 days ago |
| OpenAEC-Foundation/open-pdf-studio | ★ 926 | Other | yesterday |
| carlos7ags/folio | ★ 873 | Apache-2.0 | yesterday |
| magicrew/doc7 | ★ 721 | MIT | 2 months ago |
| Karna14314/Pdf_Tools | ★ 651 | Apache-2.0 | 8 days ago |
| opencoredev/convt | ★ 345 | AGPL-3.0 | 4 days ago |
Converts Office documents, PDFs, EPUB and CSV into clean GitHub-flavored Markdown via Rust, Node.js, Python and WASM bindings.
Rust library and CLI that classifies PDFs as text-based or scanned and extracts clean Markdown without OCR by default.
A privacy-first PDF toolkit that edits, converts, merges, and secures PDFs entirely in the browser, and can be self-hosted as static files.
Local, open-source PDF and document parser in Rust with text extraction, bounding boxes, Markdown/JSON output, and optional OCR.
An open-source Python OCR library that detects and recognizes text in PDFs and images using deep learning models built on PyTorch.
Converts untrusted PDFs, office documents, and images into safe PDFs by rendering every page as pixels inside a sandbox.
Windows OCR tool that captures text from screen regions, images, and PDFs and copies it to the clipboard or an editor, running fully on-device.
Free, open-source PDF editor for Windows with a built-in PDF 2.0 engine, offering viewing, OCR, editing, signing, and form filling without a subscription.
A Python library for document AI that combines layout analysis, table recognition, OCR and document or token classification into configurable pipelines.
Self-hosted API that converts PDFs, images and Office documents into Markdown or structured JSON using OCR and Ollama-hosted LLMs, with optional PII removal.
A React and FastAPI web app for running DeepSeek-OCR on images and multi-page PDFs, with Markdown, HTML, DOCX, and JSON export.
Python library and web UI that converts PDFs, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, images and URLs into Markdown, JSON, CSV or HTML, with OCR and structured field extraction.
A Docker-based microservice that analyzes PDF layout, classifies elements like titles, text, tables and pictures, and converts PDFs to Markdown or HTML.
A customizable, offline-first document and e-book reader for Android, Linux and Windows, built with Kotlin Multiplatform and Compose.
A free, open-source PDF viewer and editor for Windows, macOS, Linux and Android, built with Tauri 2 and a PDFium rendering engine.
A Go PDF library covering layout, HTML to PDF, text shaping for RTL and CJK scripts, redaction, forms, digital signatures, barcodes, and PDF/A.
Converts PDFs, Office files, scans, screenshots and diagrams into Markdown by sending pages to your own OpenAI-compatible vision model.
Offline Android PDF editor that merges, splits, compresses, converts, annotates and signs PDFs entirely on-device, with no internet permission.
Local file converter that runs from the right-click menu, keeping images, video, audio and documents on your own machine.
FAQ
- Is there a free, open-source alternative to Adobe Acrobat?
- Yes. The most popular open-source alternatives to Adobe Acrobat on Repolode are Stirling-PDF, anydoc, pdf-inspector.
- Which Adobe Acrobat alternative should I choose?
- Stirling-PDF has the most GitHub stars and is released under Other. Compare the license and last commit of each option in the table above before choosing.