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Open-Source PDF Software Capable of Redacting PDF Content

Permanently remove/black out sensitive content

5 tools

Command Line

MuPDF

CliGuiLibrary

Lightweight C library, viewer, and CLI toolset for PDF, XPS, and e-book formats: renders and extracts text/images/metadata/structured content; creates, splits, merges, and compresses PDFs; adds annotations (highlights, stamps, shapes); permanently redacts content; digitally signs documents; converts between PDF, SVG, PNG, HTML, and PostScript; and embeds into web pages/apps.

Java

Stirling-PDF

Web ApiWeb App

Self-hostable PDF toolkit with 50+ tools: edit, merge, split, sign, redact, and convert PDFs; OCR scanned pages; compress files; validate signatures; apply watermarks; and automate workflows via no-code pipelines, a REST API, and webhooks. Offered as a browser-based UI, desktop client, or self-hosted server (incl. air-gapped deployment).

Java

iText

Library

Create and manipulate PDFs, merge documents, digitally sign, create/fill AcroForm fields, PDF/A and PDF/UA generation, encryption (incl. FIPS-compliant crypto), barcode generation, SVG embedding, content redaction, and (via separate add-ons) OCR and HTML/CSS-to-PDF conversion.

Depreciated
Python

pdfparanoia

CliLibrary

PDF watermark-removal library/CLI targeting academic-publisher watermarks (institution names, personal identifiers, IP addresses, timestamps) for AIP, IEEE, JSTOR, RSC, and SPIE papers; also removes arbitrary user-specified strings from page content and/or XMP/DocInfo metadata, with in-place overwrite support.

Python

PyMuPDF

BindingsLibrary

Python bindings for MuPDF covering text extraction (plain, rich dictionary with font/size/color/bbox, HTML/XML, raw blocks, table-to-Markdown); embedded image extraction and high-DPI page rendering to Pixmaps; Tesseract-based OCR (100+ languages); reading/writing annotations (highlights, notes, stamps, ink) and redactions (with permanent apply); AcroForm reading and filling; page insert/delete/reorder, merge/split, and metadata editing; PDF creation and Markdown-to-PDF conversion; password protection/RC4/AES encryption; hyperlink and cross-reference handling; and outline/bookmark read-write.