40 open-source PDF editors and tools
Open Source PDF Editors & Tools
The most popular open-source PDF editors and tools for Windows, macOS and Linux on GitHub are Stirling-PDF, Tesseract OCR and OCRmyPDF. appsgit lists 40, including free alternatives to Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Acrobat Reader and ABBYY FineReader, each with its platforms, license and install commands.
Updated Oct 28, 2026
Open Source PDF Editors & Tools
Stirling-PDF
Stirling-Tools/Stirling-PDF
#1 PDF Application on GitHub that lets you edit PDFs on any device anywhere.
Active · last commit Oct 27, 2026
OfficialPDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxTesseract OCR
tesseract-ocr/tesseract
Tesseract Open Source OCR Engine (main repository).
Active · last commit Oct 27, 2026
OfficialPDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxOCRmyPDF
ocrmypdf/OCRmyPDF
OCRmyPDF adds an OCR text layer to scanned PDF files, allowing them to be searched.
Active · last commit Oct 25, 2026
OfficialPDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxKoreader
koreader/koreader
An ebook reader application supporting PDF, DjVu, EPUB, FB2 and many more formats, running on Cervantes, Kindle, Kobo, PocketBook and Android devices.
Active · last commit Oct 27, 2026
PDF editors & toolsmacOSLinuxPdfcraft
storytold/pdfcraft
PdfCraft: An open-source PDF reader and editor written by scratch in pure Rust.
Too new to judge · created Sep 30, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxSumatraPDF
sumatrapdfreader/sumatrapdf
SumatraPDF is a multi-format (PDF, EPUB, MOBI, CBZ, CBR, FB2, CHM, XPS, DjVu) reader for Windows under (A)GPLv3 license, with some code under BSD license (see AUTHORS).
Maintained · last commit Oct 28, 2026
OfficialPDF editors & toolsWindowsXournal++
xournalpp/xournalpp
Xournal++ is a handwriting notetaking software with PDF annotation support.
Active · last commit Oct 26, 2026
OfficialPDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxRnote
flxzt/rnote
Sketch and take handwritten notes.
Active · last commit Oct 25, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxX AnyLabeling
CVHub520/X-AnyLabeling
X-AnyLabeling: A lightweight, efficient, and unified cross-platform desktop application for annotating text, image, video, point cloud and multimodal data, combining versatile built-in tools with…
Active · last commit Oct 28, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxSioyek
ahrm/sioyek
Sioyek is a PDF viewer with a focus on textbooks and research papers.
Maintained · last commit Oct 22, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxSTranslate
STranslate/STranslate
A ready-to-go translation ocr tool developed with WPF/WPF 开发的一款即用即走的翻译、OCR工具.
Active · last commit Sep 24, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowseSearch
xushengfeng/eSearch
截屏 离线OCR 搜索翻译 以图搜图 贴图 录屏 万向滚动截屏 屏幕翻译 Screenshot Offline OCR Search Translate Search for picture Paste the picture on the screen Screen recorder Omnidirectional scrolling screenshot Screen translator…
Active · last commit Oct 24, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxPDF Arranger
pdfarranger/pdfarranger
Small python-gtk application, which helps the user to merge or split PDF documents and rotate, crop and rearrange their pages using an interactive and intuitive graphical interface.
Active · last commit Sep 30, 2026
OfficialPDF editors & toolsWindowsLinuxDigUp
ARahim3/DigUp
Search your computer by what's in your files: photos, PDFs, documents, recordings, videos and code.
Too new to judge · created Oct 8, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxText Grab
TheJoeFin/Text-Grab
Use OCR in Windows quickly and easily with Text Grab.
Active · last commit Oct 27, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSNaps2
cyanfish/naps2
Scan documents to PDF and more, as simply as possible.
Active · last commit Oct 25, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxPdfsam
torakiki/pdfsam
PDFsam, a desktop application to split, merge, mix, rotate PDF files and extract pages.
Active · last commit Oct 2, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxKillerPDF
SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF
Free and open-source PDF editor for Windows with a built-in PDF 2.0 engine.
Active · last commit Oct 23, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsMacshot
sw33tLie/macshot
Feature-packed native macOS screenshot & recording tool: annotate, auto-redact PII, record GIFs, OCR + translate, scroll capture, beautify, and more.
Active · last commit Oct 14, 2026
PDF editors & toolsmacOSMarp CLI
marp-team/marp-cli
A CLI interface for Marp and Marpit based converters.
Active · last commit Sep 8, 2026
OfficialPDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxKsnip
ksnip/ksnip
ksnip the cross-platform screenshot and annotation tool.
Maintained · last commit Oct 21, 2026
OfficialPDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxExifcleaner
szTheory/exifcleaner
Cross-platform desktop GUI app to clean image metadata.
Active · last commit Oct 25, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxRetain PDF
wxyhgk/retain-pdf
在保留版面、公式与结构的前提下进行 PDF 翻译，适用于科研与技术文档.
Active · last commit Oct 25, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxDecktape
astefanutti/decktape
PDF exporter for HTML presentations.
Active · last commit Oct 21, 2026
PDF editors & toolsLinuxGowall
Achno/gowall
A tool to convert a Wallpaper's color scheme / palette, OCR with VLM's Traditional & Hybrid, Image Compression,color palette extraction, image upsacling with Adversarial Networks and more image…
Maintained · last commit Oct 20, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxgImageReader
manisandro/gImageReader
A Gtk/Qt front-end to tesseract-ocr.
Active · last commit Oct 27, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsLinuxTRex
amebalabs/TRex
Copy any text on your screen, stop retyping.
Maintained · last commit Sep 29, 2026
OfficialPDF editors & toolsmacOSClop
FuzzyIdeas/Clop
Clop Image, video, PDF and clipboard optimiser Copy large, paste small, send fast As long as the Clop app is running, every time you copy an image to your clipboard, Clop will optimise it to the…
Active · last commit Oct 16, 2026
PDF editors & toolsmacOSOkular
KDE/okular
Okular can view and annotate documents of various formats, including PDF, Postscript, Comic Book, and various image formats.
Maintained · last commit Oct 28, 2026
OfficialPDF editors & toolsWindowsLinuxPDF4QT
JakubMelka/PDF4QT
PDF4QT is an open-source PDF toolkit for Windows and Linux, combining powerful desktop applications, command-line tools and a modern MIT-licensed C++/Qt PDF engine.
Active · last commit Oct 18, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsLinuxGromit Mpx
bk138/gromit-mpx
Gromit-MPX is an on-screen annotation tool that works with any Unix desktop environment under X11 as well as XWayland.
Maintained · last commit Sep 1, 2026
PDF editors & toolsLinuxGradia
AlexanderVanhee/Gradia
Make your screenshots ready for all.
Maintained · last commit Sep 30, 2026
PDF editors & toolsLinuxPdfx
AlexandrosGounis/pdfx
A free-floating 2D Canvas for processing multiple PDF files simultaneously.
Active · last commit Sep 19, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxDrawPen
DmytroVasin/DrawPen
DrawPen is a simple screen annotation. Available on macOS, Windows & Linux.
Active · last commit Oct 18, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxSnapX
SnapXL/SnapX
SnapX is a free, open-source, cross-platform tool that lets you capture or record any area of your screen and instantly share it with a single keypress.
Maintained · last commit Sep 15, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxAnymd
SylphxAI/anymd
Any file → clean Markdown for AI agents: PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, EPUB, HTML and web pages, images (OCR), audio and video (metadata, subtitles, transcripts).
Active · last commit Oct 27, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxEasyread
Edwardxlai/easyread
把英文论文读成舒服的中文：本地 PDF 论文翻译、原文对照、边读边问 AI、文献管理。Read English papers in comfortable Chinese.
Too new to judge · created Sep 30, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxMoePeek
cosZone/MoePeek
A lightweight macOS selection translator built with pure Swift 6, featuring on-device Apple Translate for privacy, only 5MB install size and stable ~50MB memory usage.
Active · last commit Oct 20, 2026
PDF editors & toolsmacOSTexworks
TeXworks/texworks
Main codebase for TeXworks, a simple interface for working with TeX documents.
Maintained · last commit Oct 11, 2026
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxOneClip
One-Clip/OneClip
OneClip——A simple and professional native clipboard manager for macOS ｜干净美观的 macOS 剪贴板管理工具｜还支持轻量级截图/长截图、录屏录音、OCR、划词翻译、拖拽容器、堆栈粘贴、PopClip划词、AI 集成、局域网同步等.
Active · last commit Oct 16, 2026
PDF editors & toolsmacOS
What are the best open-source PDF editors and tools?
By GitHub stars, Stirling-PDF is the most popular (95,216 stars), followed by Tesseract OCR and OCRmyPDF. People often use these instead of Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Acrobat Reader and ABBYY FineReader. Each page lists the platforms, license and last commit.
Which of these run on Windows, Mac and Linux?
31 of the 40 open-source PDF editors and tools listed here run on Windows, 30 on macOS and 31 on Linux; on a Mac, the most starred is Stirling-PDF. 23 can be installed with a package manager such as Flathub, Homebrew, winget or Chocolatey.
Are these open-source PDF editors and tools free?
Yes. All 40 use an open-source license (OSI-approved or FSF-free), so you can use, copy and change them for free.
How are these open-source PDF editors and tools chosen?
Apps come from desktop awesome lists (Awesome Linux Software, awesome-mac, awesome-windows, awesome-electron and the media and file sections of awesome-cli-apps), more than 70 GitHub topics such as desktop-app, electron-app, tauri-app, gtk, qt, macos-app, pdf-editor, cad and remote-desktop, and a hand-picked list of flagship apps. An app is listed only if it has a license (one GitHub detects, or one appsgit checked by hand), a README and a commit in the last six months, is not archived or a fork, and has 1000+ GitHub stars (topics), 500+ (awesome lists) or 100+ (hand-picked). It must also be an end-user application with a desktop signal: installers in its releases, install instructions for Windows, macOS or Linux, or a Flathub, Homebrew, winget, Chocolatey, Snap or AUR package. Libraries, frameworks, themes, plugins and servers are left out, and source-available apps are labelled as such.