37 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 37, including free alternatives to Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Acrobat Reader and ABBYY FineReader, each with its platforms, license and install commands.
Updated Oct 8, 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.
OfficialPDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxTesseract OCR
tesseract-ocr/tesseract
Tesseract Open Source OCR Engine (main repository).
OfficialPDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxOCRmyPDF
ocrmypdf/OCRmyPDF
OCRmyPDF adds an OCR text layer to scanned PDF files, allowing them to be searched.
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.
PDF editors & toolsmacOSLinuxSumatraPDF
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).
OfficialPDF editors & toolsWindowsXournal++
xournalpp/xournalpp
Xournal++ is a handwriting notetaking software with PDF annotation support.
OfficialPDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxRnote
flxzt/rnote
Sketch and take handwritten notes.
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxSioyek
ahrm/sioyek
Sioyek is a PDF viewer with a focus on textbooks and research papers.
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.
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…
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.
OfficialPDF editors & toolsWindowsLinuxText Grab
TheJoeFin/Text-Grab
Use OCR in Windows quickly and easily with Text Grab.
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSPdfsam
torakiki/pdfsam
PDFsam, a desktop application to split, merge, mix, rotate PDF files and extract pages.
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxNaps2
cyanfish/naps2
Scan documents to PDF and more, as simply as possible.
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxKillerPDF
SteveTheKiller/KillerPDF
Free and open-source PDF editor for Windows with a built-in PDF 2.0 engine.
PDF editors & toolsWindowsMarp CLI
marp-team/marp-cli
A CLI interface for Marp and Marpit based converters.
OfficialPDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxMacshot
sw33tLie/macshot
Feature-packed native macOS screenshot & recording tool: annotate, auto-redact PII, record GIFs, OCR + translate, scroll capture, beautify, and more.
PDF editors & toolsmacOSKsnip
ksnip/ksnip
ksnip the cross-platform screenshot and annotation tool.
OfficialPDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxExifcleaner
szTheory/exifcleaner
Cross-platform desktop GUI app to clean image metadata.
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxPdfcraft
storytold/pdfcraft
An open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Acrobat built in pure Rust.
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.
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxDecktape
astefanutti/decktape
PDF exporter for HTML presentations.
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…
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxgImageReader
manisandro/gImageReader
A Gtk/Qt front-end to tesseract-ocr.
PDF editors & toolsWindowsLinuxTRex
amebalabs/TRex
Copy any text on your screen, stop retyping.
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…
PDF editors & toolsmacOSOkular
KDE/okular
Okular can view and annotate documents of various formats, including PDF, Postscript, Comic Book, and various image formats.
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.
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.
PDF editors & toolsLinuxGradia
AlexanderVanhee/Gradia
Make your screenshots ready for all.
PDF editors & toolsLinuxMarkeron
ifer47/markeron
Lightweight (~1.5 MB) open-source screen annotation with click-through mode and keyboard-first shortcuts.
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSPdfx
AlexandrosGounis/pdfx
A free-floating 2D Canvas for processing multiple PDF files simultaneously.
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.
PDF editors & toolsWindowsmacOSLinuxDrawPen
DmytroVasin/DrawPen
DrawPen is a simple screen annotation. Available on macOS, Windows & Linux.
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.
PDF editors & toolsmacOSTexworks
TeXworks/texworks
Main codebase for TeXworks, a simple interface for working with TeX documents.
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.
PDF editors & toolsmacOS
What are the best open-source PDF editors and tools?
By GitHub stars, Stirling-PDF is the most popular (93,752 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?
28 of the 37 open-source PDF editors and tools listed here run on Windows, 27 on macOS and 27 on Linux; on a Mac, the most starred is Stirling-PDF. 21 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 37 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.