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Open-Source PDF Library Software

Importable code package for programmatic use in its own language

174 tools

Command Line

Poppler

CliLibrary

PDF rendering library and command-line suite (pdftotext, pdfimages, pdftoppm, pdftocairo, pdftohtml, pdftops, pdfinfo, pdffonts, pdfdetach, pdfattach, pdfseparate, pdfunite, pdfsig) covering text/image extraction, page rendering, format conversion, metadata, attachments, and signature verification.

Command Line

Ghostscript

CliLibrary

PostScript and PDF interpreter/renderer from Artifex: converts PostScript/PDF to images, text, DOCX, PCL, and XPS; compresses PDFs while preserving quality; converts to/validates PDF/A; adds an OCR text layer to scanned pages; imposition (N-up), ICC color management, and ZUGFeRD/Factur-X e-invoicing support.

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.

C

libharu

Library

ANSI C library for generating PDFs from scratch: lines, text, and images (PNG/JPEG with CMYK/alpha/CCITT support); Type1/TrueType/CJK font embedding; outlines, text and link annotations; document encryption; Deflate compression; and PDF/A-1b compliant output.

C

PdfiumViewer

Library

WinForms PDF viewer control built on Google's PDFium, providing PdfDocument (document access), PdfRenderer (rendering with zoom/scroll), and PdfViewer (toolbar UI for printing and saving) for embedding PDF viewing in .NET applications.

DepreciatedStale
C#

PDFsharp / MigraDoc

Library

PDFsharp creates and processes PDFs on the fly using GDI+-style drawing routines (text, images, shapes) shared across screen, PDF, and metafile output. MigraDoc layers an object model on top (paragraphs, tables, charts, sections, styles) with automatic pagination, bookmarks, tables of contents, and indexes, rendering to PDF or RTF.

C#

PdfPig

Library

Reads and extracts text, words, letters (with position/font data), images, annotations, hyperlinks, embedded files, and bookmarks from PDFs (port of PDFBox); performs layout/reading-order analysis; supports basic PDF creation, merging, read-only AcroForm inspection, and opening password-protected documents.

C#

PdfSharpCore

Library

.NET Standard port of PDFsharp that removes the original's GDI+ dependency, using SixLabors.ImageSharp for images and SixLabors.Fonts for typography, for PDF creation/manipulation on non-Windows/.NET Core platforms.

C#

Gios.PSM

CliGuiLibrary

Free, portable PDF splitting/merging utility (library, console, and GUI); also converts JPG images to PDF.

Stale
C#

QuestPDF

Library

Fluent-API PDF generation library for .NET: page layout, headers/footers, tables, columns, sections, watermarks, text/fonts/colors/backgrounds/borders, images, SVG, alignment/padding/scaling/rotation/layering, loops/conditionals/reusable components for data-driven documents, merging, encryption, metadata, page extraction, and PDF/A, PDF/UA, and EN 16931 (e-invoicing) compliance.

C++

pdf2htmlEX

Library

Converts PDF to HTML while preserving text/layout fidelity (native positioned text with original fonts), producing a single self-contained file or a paged on-demand-loading version; carries over hyperlinks, outlines/bookmarks, SVG backgrounds, Type 3 and CJK fonts, and print support. Built on Poppler and FontForge; this pdf2htmlEX/pdf2htmlEX fork continues the original coolwanglu/pdf2htmlEX as an open community effort.

C++

qpdf

Library

Low-level, content-preserving PDF structure tool: linearizes ('fast web view'), encrypts/decrypts, splits and merges files, inspects/edits PDF object structure, and repairs damaged files. Explicitly does not render pages or extract text/content.

R

qpdf

BindingsLibrary

R bindings for the qpdf C++ library, exposing content-preserving PDF transformations from R: splitting, combining/merging, and compressing PDF files (e.g. `pdf_compress()`). Does not read PDF content itself — the maintainers point to the 'pdftools' R package for text/data extraction.

C++

wkhtmltoimage

CliLibrary

Headless, command-line tool (and C library) that renders HTML into image files using the Qt WebKit rendering engine, without requiring a display server. Can capture live URLs or local HTML.

DepreciatedStale
C++

wkhtmltopdf

CliLibrary

Headless, command-line tool (and C library) that renders HTML into PDF using the Qt WebKit rendering engine, without requiring a display server. Can capture live URLs or local HTML.

DepreciatedStale
C++

PDF-Writer

Library

C++ library (also known as PDFHummus/PDFWriter, the engine behind HummusJS/Muhammara) for creating, parsing, and modifying PDFs: JPEG/PNG/TIFF image embedding, PDF 2.0 encryption (via OpenSSL), and FreeType-based text rendering.

C++

podofo

Library

C++17 library for reading, writing, and modifying PDFs: full-featured low-level Unicode text extraction (with CJK support), text drawing with automatic CID encoding and font subsetting, incremental-update saving, PAdES-B digital signing (RSA/ECDSA, async), and PDF/A and PDF/UA compliance preservation when adding annotations or form fields. Does not yet render PDF content, and text shaping/kerning is limited.

C++

PDFedit

GuiLibrary

PDF editing library, GUI, and tools for viewing and editing the internal structure of PDF documents — useful for inspecting malformed/problematic PDFs. A Flatpak build is available for modern Linux.

DepreciatedStale
Clojure

clj-pdf

Library

Generates PDFs from Clojure data structures: text/typography with custom TTF fonts, CSS-like stylesheets, lists, tables, multi-column layouts, SVG and image embedding, bar/line/pie charts, headers/footers, page numbering, document metadata, file attachments, and watermarks.

Dart

dart_pdf

Library

Set of Dart/Flutter packages (`pdf` for core PDF generation, `printing` for device print/preview integration) that let Flutter apps generate and print PDF files on iOS and Android.

Go

pdf

Library

Go package (rsc.io/pdf) for reading PDF files: opens (optionally password-encrypted) files, reads the page tree, outline/bookmarks, per-page fonts and their metrics, and low-level page content (text runs and drawn rectangles) via a low-level Value/object API. A known unpatched stack-overflow DoS vulnerability is reported against it (GO-2026-5781).

DepreciatedStale
Go

docconv

CliDriverLibraryServer

Go library/CLI/HTTP service that converts PDF, DOC, DOCX, XML, HTML, RTF, ODT, Pages, and image files to plain text and metadata (JSON), with optional OCR support (via Tesseract, built with the `ocr` tag) for image-based input.

Stale
Go

GoFPDF

Library

Go library for generating PDFs: text with UTF-8/RTL support, standard/TrueType/Type1 fonts, JPEG/PNG/GIF/TIFF images and basic SVG, vector graphics (lines, Bézier curves, arcs, gradients, transparency), barcodes, charts, outline bookmarks, internal/external links, page templates and importing existing PDFs as templates, layers, document protection/encryption, and file attachments/annotations.

DepreciatedStale
Go

gopdf

Library

Go library for generating PDFs: Unicode/CJK subfont text with kerning, alignment, sub/superscript, RGB/CMYK color; vector shapes (lines, ovals, rounded rectangles, polygons, curves); JPG/PNG images with masking; password protection with permissions; headers/footers, links, transparency/blend modes; table layout; page rotation; and importing/reusing existing PDF pages as templates.

Go

uniDoc

Library

Go PDF library.

DepreciatedStale
Go

UniPDF

Library

Go PDF library (pure Go): generates reports/invoices with styled text and tables; creates and fills forms; merges, splits, reorders, and rotates pages (incl. N-up layouts); extracts text (with position/formatting), images, and tabular data to CSV; adds/converts images to PDF; removes or adds password protection; validates and applies digital signatures; compresses/optimizes files; adds watermarks; and supports CCITTFax/JBIG2 image decoding.

Go

gosseract

Library

Go wrapper around the Tesseract OCR C++ library: sets an input image and returns the OCR'd text, with support for multiple languages via trained-data files.

Go

goreport

Library

Go library (built on gopdf) for generating banded PDF reports — page headers/footers, grouped headers/summaries, detail bands, and a report summary — with text cells, lines, rectangles/ovals, JPEG images, TrueType fonts, and multiple page sizes/orientations.

Go

pdfcpu

CliLibrary

Go PDF processor (CLI + library) supporting PDF up to 2.0 (ISO 32000-2): validate, optimize, split, trim, and merge PDFs; encrypt/decrypt; resize, rotate, and crop pages; extract/manipulate images, fonts, and metadata; manage attachments and portfolios; validate, report, and remove digital signatures; add/remove stamps and watermarks; process forms, bookmarks, and annotations; and generate booklets, N-up/N-down layouts, grids, and posters.

Go

invoice-generator-api

LibraryWeb Api

REST API that generates invoices as PDFs from supplied details (invoice number, dates, sender/recipient, line items, terms), with SDKs for JS/Node, Python, C#/.NET, PHP, Go, Dart, and Android.

Go

PDF Guru

Library

Self-hostable 'knowledge converter' that extracts highlighted text, formulas, and images from PDFs (plus Word/Excel/images, WeChat Reading notes, and mind maps) to generate Anki flashcards, using an LLM (Gemini, GPT-4, Claude, etc.) to identify key concepts automatically; also batch-exports Anki decks back to PDF.

Haskell

pdf-toolbox

Library

Haskell PDF library supporting on-demand/streaming parsing (without loading the whole file into memory) at both high-level (catalog, page tree, pages) and low-level (xref, trailer, objects, incl. xref/object streams) abstraction; extracts text with exact glyph positions; supports incremental-update editing, basic PDF generation, and partial support for encrypted documents.

Java

Apache XML Graphics FOP

Library

Print formatter driven by XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO): reads an FO tree (often produced via XSLT from semantic XML) and renders it to PDF (its primary target, targeting the PDF 1.4 spec), plus PostScript, PCL, AFP, PNG, RTF, TXT, and other outputs. Handles multi-page tables, footnotes, static page regions, and external graphics; usable standalone, embedded, via servlet, or via an Ant task.

Java

Apache Tika

CliDriverLibraryServer

Content-analysis toolkit that detects file types and extracts text and metadata from over a thousand file formats (including PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX) through a single parsing interface; supports OCR (via Tesseract), language detection, named-entity recognition, and parsing of embedded documents/attachments. Available as a Java library, CLI (tika-app), or REST server (tika-server).

Java

Apache PDFBox

CliLibrary

Java library and CLI toolset covering PDF creation from scratch (with embedded fonts/images); Unicode text extraction; splitting and merging; form field extraction and filling; PDF/A-1b validation via Preflight; rendering pages to PNG/JPEG; printing via the Java printing API; and digital signing.

Java

PDFLayoutTextStripper

Library

Subclass of Apache PDFBox's PDFTextStripper that converts a PDF to plain text while preserving the original layout/spatial positioning, making it easier to extract structured data such as tables and form content.

Stale
Java

OpenPDF

Library

PDF creation/manipulation library: creates PDFs from scratch and modifies existing ones (add/remove pages, edit text); HTML-to-PDF conversion (openpdf-html module); text, fonts, graphics, images, and tables; page layout control; encryption and digital signing (via BouncyCastle); text extraction; PDF-to-image rendering (openpdf-renderer); and PDF 2.0 (ISO 32000-2) features including Brotli stream compression.

Java

itextpdf

Library

Legacy iText 5: core PDF creation/manipulation library (receiving security fixes only), with add-on modules for PDF 2.0 features (itext-xtra), PDF/A generation/validation (itext-pdfa), and XML/HTML-to-PDF conversion (xmlworker). Targets Java 5 compatibility, which blocks upgrading some vulnerable dependencies.

Depreciated
Java

tabula-java

CliLibrary

Table-extraction library (powers the Tabula tool) that pulls tabular data out of PDFs using lattice mode (ruled cell borders) or stream mode (no borders), exporting to CSV, TSV, or JSON; usable as a CLI for batch processing or as a Java API, with support for selective pages, custom extraction areas, and password-protected files.

Java

XDocReport

Library

Merges DOCX/ODT template documents (authored in MS Word or OpenOffice/LibreOffice) with Java data models to generate reports, then converts the result to PDF, XHTML, or the original office format, including an iText-based PDF converter.

Java

Flying Saucer

Library

Renders well-formed XML/XHTML using CSS 2.1 layout/formatting to Swing panels, images, or PDF (via an OpenPDF-based renderer, or by delegating to a headless Chrome shell for modern HTML5/CSS3 support); also offers SWT output for Eclipse-based apps.

Java

neoFlyingSaucer

Library

Pure-Java HTML/CSS-to-PDF/image renderer, a modernization of Flying Saucer.

DepreciatedStale
Java

Open HTML to PDF

Library

Renders a practical subset of XML/XHTML/HTML5 with CSS 2.1+ (incl. CSS3 transforms, gradients, multiple backgrounds) to PDF or images, with SVG and MathML plugin support, accessible/tagged PDF output (Section 508, PDF/UA, WCAG 2.0), PDF/A compliance, font fallback and embedding, RTL/bidi text, footnotes, and file embedding via link download attributes.

Stale
Java

Docs to PDF Converter

CliLibrary

Standalone CLI tool and embeddable Java library that converts DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, and ODT files to PDF without requiring LibreOffice; PPT/PPTX slides are converted to PDFs with each slide embedded as a PNG image.

DepreciatedStale
Java

YARG

Library

Java reporting library (developed by Haulmont for the CUBA Platform) that fills templates with data (loaded via SQL, Groovy, or other sources) and generates reports in Office formats (doc/docx/xls/xlsx), HTML, FreeMarker, CSV, or custom text — headless, with no built-in UI, for embedding into host applications.

Java

veraPDF

CliLibrary

Industry-backed, open-source validation library and CLI for checking PDF files against the PDF/A and PDF/UA standards.

Java

JasperReports

Library

Java reporting engine that compiles XML report templates (.jrxml) into executable reports (.jasper), pulling data from any data source to produce pixel-perfect documents; exports to PDF, HTML, Excel, Word, and OpenOffice formats, and renders Pie/Bar/Stacked Bar charts. Designed with Jaspersoft Studio and embeddable via API.

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
Java

AndroidPdfViewer

Library

Android library (built on PdfiumAndroid/PDFium) for displaying PDF documents with animated page transitions, gestures, pinch/double-tap zoom, and page navigation; ownership recently transitioned and the project is seeking contributors.

Java

PdfBox-Android

Library

Android port of Apache PDFBox for reading and manipulating PDF documents on-device, with image handling (including optional JPX/JPEG2000 support via JP2Android).

Stale
Java

PdfViewPager

Library

Android widget that displays PDF documents (from app assets, SD card, or remote URLs) inside Activities or Fragments, with built-in zooming and panning; requires Android API 21+ (uses the platform PdfRenderer class).

Stale
JavaScript

html-pdf-chrome

Library

Node.js library that renders HTML (local strings or remote URLs) to PDF using headless Chrome/Chromium, or exports as PNG/JPEG/WebP screenshots; supports templated headers/footers, custom HTTP headers, configurable viewport/device-scale, and multiple render-completion triggers (callbacks, DOM events, timers).

JavaScript

html2pdf.js

Library

Client-side (browser-only) library built on html2canvas and jsPDF that converts a webpage, DOM element, or canvas into a PDF entirely in the browser, with configurable margins, page breaks, image quality/type, and a promise-based worker API. Renders content as images, so output text is not selectable/searchable and files can be large.

JavaScript

HummusJS

BindingsLibrary

Fast Node.js module (native binding around the C++ PDFWriter/PDFHummus engine) for creating, parsing, and manipulating PDF files and streams.

JavaScript

jsPDF

Library

Client-side JavaScript library for generating PDFs in the browser or Node: configurable paper size/orientation/units, text with 14 standard fonts or custom embedded TTF/Unicode fonts, images, transformation matrices, patterns, and FormObjects; plugin ecosystem adds HTML-to-PDF (via html2canvas) and table generation. Ships as ES module, UMD, or with TypeScript typings. (Originally MrRio/jsPDF, now hosted under github.com/parallax/jsPDF, which the old URL redirects to.)

JavaScript

jsreport

LibraryWeb Api

Open-source report-rendering platform: design reports with templating engines (e.g. Handlebars) or a visual designer, and render them to PDF, HTML, Excel, DOCX, and other formats; includes user management, a REST API, scheduling, and email delivery. Usable standalone or embedded as a Node.js library.

JavaScript

node-html-pdf

Library

PhantomJS-based library that converts HTML to PDF, PNG, or JPEG via a file/stream/buffer API, with paper size, orientation, margin, zoom, and header/footer options.

DepreciatedStale
JavaScript

pdf-extract

Library

Set of tools (per its npm registry listing) that convert PDF files to usable formats for data processing: extracting text from searchable PDFs and performing OCR on scanned/image-only PDFs. Note: its GitHub source repository (nisaacson/pdf-extract) now returns 404 — likely deleted or made private; this description is sourced from the published npm package metadata instead.

DepreciatedStale
JavaScript

pdf-lib

Library

Dependency-free JavaScript library (works in browsers, Node, Deno, React Native) to create PDFs from scratch or modify existing ones: add/insert/remove/copy pages, draw text (with embedded custom fonts), images (PNG/JPEG), vector graphics and SVG paths; create and fill AcroForm fields (text, checkbox, radio, dropdown) and read/flatten them; embed pages from other PDFs, split and merge documents, add file attachments, and read/set document metadata.

Stale
JavaScript

pdf-parse

Library

Pure JavaScript, cross-platform module to extract text from PDFs.

JavaScript

PDF.js

Library

A general-purpose, web standards-based platform for parsing and rendering PDFs.

JavaScript

pdf2json

CliLibrary

Node.js library/CLI (built on Mozilla's pdf.js engine) that converts PDFs to JSON: extracts text (with position, rotation, styling, color, and font metadata), page layout, and interactive AcroForm field data (text inputs, checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdowns, signature fields); also outputs plain-text files, and runs as a REST service or stream-based parser.

JavaScript

PDFKit

Library

PDF generation library (Node and browser) with an HTML5-canvas-like vector graphics API (paths, SVG path parsing, gradients, transformations), text with line-wrapping and bulleted lists, embedded/subsetted TrueType/OpenType/WOFF/WOFF2 fonts, JPEG/PNG image embedding, tables, annotations (links, notes, highlights), AcroForms, document outlines, encryption with granular permission controls, and Tagged-PDF/PDF-UA accessibility support.

JavaScript

pdfmake

Library

Declarative, pure-JavaScript (client/server) PDF generation library: text with line-wrapping/alignment, numbered/bulleted lists, page breaks and sections, tables (auto/fixed/star column widths, spanning, repeating headers, multi-column snaking layouts), images and vector graphics, static/dynamic headers and footers, background layers, custom page size/orientation/margins, embedded fonts, table of contents, and PDF metadata.

JavaScript

PDFObject

Library

Lightweight JavaScript utility for dynamically embedding PDFs in web pages via an iframe, with automatic detection of inline-PDF browser support, graceful fallback content for unsupported browsers/mobile, base64 PDF handling, and support for Adobe PDF Open Parameters (e.g. linking to a specific page).

JavaScript

React-PDF

Library

Displays existing PDFs in React apps (built on PDF.js): renders pages via `<Document>`/`<Page>` with canvas, custom, or no rendering; shows outline/table of contents and thumbnails; selectable text and annotation/link layers; form rendering; page rotation and zoom; password-protected PDF handling; JPEG2000 and non-Latin (cMap) support. (Complementary to @react-pdf/renderer, which creates PDFs rather than displaying them.)

JavaScript

react-pdf

Library

Creates PDF files using React components (`Document`, `Page`, `Text`, `View`) with a StyleSheet/flexbox styling API; renders in-browser via `<PDFViewer>` or saves to file/buffer in Node. (Complementary to wojtekmaj/react-pdf, which displays existing PDFs rather than creating them.)

JavaScript

textract

CliDriverLibrary

Node.js module (CLI + API) that extracts text from HTML, PDF, DOC/DOCX, ODT, RTF, XLS/XLSX/XLSB/XLSM, CSV, ODS, PPTX/ODP, XML, Markdown, EPUB, and image formats (PNG/JPG/GIF via Tesseract OCR); wraps external tools (pdftotext, antiword, tesseract, unrtf) and supports password-protected PDFs and configurable OCR language.

JavaScript

Universal Viewer

Library

Open-source, IIIF-based media viewer for sharing books, manuscripts, newspapers, film, audio, and 3D objects on the web; renders images, PDFs, audio, video, and 3D files as an embeddable npm package.

JavaScript

vue-pdf

Library

Vue 2 component for displaying PDFs from URLs, file paths, or binary data: page navigation, 90°-increment rotation, password-protected PDF handling, per-page or range printing, load-progress tracking, text extraction/selection, clickable internal links, and rendering multiple page instances at once.

Stale
JavaScript

zerox

Library

OCR/document-ingestion library (Node/TypeScript and Python implementations) that converts PDFs, Word/Excel/PowerPoint files, and images to page images, then sends each to a vision-language model (OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, Google Gemini, or Vertex AI) to produce Markdown, preserving tables/charts; supports structured JSON-schema extraction, page selection, concurrent processing, and orientation/edge correction.

JavaScript

muhammara

Library

Node.js module for creating, reading, and modifying PDF files and streams — a drop-in replacement for HummusJS built on the same underlying PDF-Writer/PDFHummus C++ engine.

JavaScript

pdf-merger-js

Library

Node.js/browser library that merges multiple PDF documents (or selected parts/pages of them) into a single new PDF.

JavaScript

pdf-img-convert

Library

Node.js module that converts PDF files into image buffers (PNG) without touching the filesystem.

JavaScript

pdf2pic

Library

Node.js utility for converting PDF pages to image formats, with output directly to file, base64, or buffer.

JavaScript

pdf.js-extract

Library

Simple async Node.js PDF text reader (built on PDF.js) that extracts text along with each item's x/y position on the page.

JavaScript

svg-to-pdfkit

LibraryPlugin

Plugin for PDFKit that inserts SVG graphics into PDF documents generated with PDFKit.

Stale
JavaScript

svg2pdf.js

Library

JavaScript-only SVG-to-PDF conversion utility that runs in the browser, built on top of jsPDF.

JavaScript

react-to-pdf

Library

Library for creating PDF documents directly from React components in the browser.

JavaScript

pdfreader

Library

Node.js library that reads text from PDFs and parses tabular data with automatic column detection and rule-based parsing.

JavaScript

pdfjs

Library

PDF generation library targeting both server- and client-side JavaScript. (Not to be confused with Mozilla's PDF.js, a PDF rendering/viewing engine — this is an unrelated, same-named PDF-creation library.)

JavaScript

jsPDF-AutoTable

LibraryPlugin

jsPDF plugin for generating PDF tables: parses existing HTML tables via CSS selectors or builds tables from JavaScript data (head/body/foot), with striped/grid/plain themes, custom colors/fonts/alignment, colspan/rowspan, automatic or manual page breaks (including horizontal breaks for wide tables), and lifecycle hooks for custom styling.

JavaScript

pdf2xml-viewer

Library

Displays and inspects individual text boxes within PDF documents by converting them to pdf2xml format (via poppler-utils) and rendering the boxes with D3.js in a browser — useful for examining OCR-processed 'sandwich' PDFs before extraction. Companion tool to pdftabextract, letting you view the row/column grids it detects.

DepreciatedStale
LaTeX

CV Boilerplate

Library

LaTeX/Pandoc template that separates CV content (stored in a YAML file) from a LaTeX presentation template, compiling to a professionally typeset PDF via a makefile; supports configurable fonts, sizes, language/hyphenation, and margins.

Stale
LaTeX

Invoice Boilerplate

Library

LaTeX/Pandoc/XeTeX template that generates invoice PDFs from a YAML data file (`details.yml`), auto-calculating line totals and VAT via the `spreadtab` package, with configurable fonts/margins/currency/language, optional embedded signature image, and optional custom letterhead PDF layered underneath.

Stale
LaTeX

Letter Boilerplate

Library

LaTeX/XeTeX/Pandoc template that generates letter PDFs from a Markdown file with a YAML header (recipient, date, subject); supports custom fonts, sizes, margins, language/hyphenation, an auto-embedded signature image, and an optional custom letterhead PDF background, built via a makefile.

Stale
Lisp

CL-PDF

Library

Cross-platform Common Lisp library for generating PDF files without third-party tools: TrueType/Type 1 fonts (with Unicode), PNG image embedding, barcode generation, charting, optional zlib compression, and a PDF templating system; pairs with cl-typesetting for a full document-composition system.

Stale
Perl

CAM::PDF

Library

Perl module (PDF 1.0–1.5) for reading and writing PDFs: extract/delete/duplicate pages, get page text/content trees, append/prepend pages from other PDFs, handle password-protected documents and permissions, list/add fonts, list/fill form fields, remove annotations, detect linearized PDFs, remove unused objects, and apply compression filters.

Stale
Perl

PDF::API2

Library

Perl module for creating and modifying PDFs: page management (add/insert/import pages, page labels); built-in and embedded (TrueType/OpenType/Type1/bitmap) fonts; image import (GIF/JPEG/PNG/PNM/TIFF); barcode generation (Code128, Code39, EAN-13, QR, Codabar, ITF); spot/device colorspaces and custom color palettes; document metadata; outlines/bookmarks; and viewer preferences/page layout modes.

Perl

PDF::Reuse

Library

Perl module for building PDFs by reusing existing pages as templates/backgrounds: adds positioned/rotated text, embeds JPEG images, hyperlinks, and raw PDF operators; supports built-in and embedded TrueType (UTF-8) fonts, hierarchical bookmarks, attached/embedded JavaScript actions, form field value assignment, and content stream compression.

Perl

PDF::WebKit

Library

Perl port of the Ruby PDFKit library: converts HTML strings, URLs, or files to PDF using wkhtmltopdf's WebKit rendering engine, with external stylesheet injection and PDF options settable via constructor args, global config, or HTML meta tags.

Stale
Perl

Prima::PS::PDF

Library

Part of the Prima Perl graphics toolkit: provides a PDF output interface to Prima::Drawable, letting Prima's drawing API render directly to PDF (alongside sibling modules for PostScript and Type1 font output).

Perl

Image::ExifTool::PDF

Library

Component of Image::ExifTool that reads metadata from PDF files, including support for PDF-1.5 object streams (limited Filter/Predictor algorithms) and all standard PDF encryption methods through PDF-2.0 (including AESV2/AES-128 and AESV3/AES-256).

Perl

Mojo::PDF

Library

Perl module (built on PDF::Reuse) for generating multi-page PDFs: text with font/size/color control, 14 built-in fonts plus custom TTF embedding (with Unicode), alignment and rotation, regex-based text formatting, JPEG image embedding, importing pages from existing PDFs as templates, horizontal rules, raw content streams, and auto-sized tables with headers, borders, padding, and page-overflow handling.

Perl

PDF::Create

Library

Pure-Perl (PDF 1.0–1.3), dependency-free module for creating PDFs: multi-page documents with standard paper sizes and page rotation/crop/bleed/trim boxes; built-in PostScript fonts with Unicode/international character support; lines, GIF/JPEG image embedding, and clickable URI link annotations; hierarchical outline/table of contents; and document metadata.

Stale
Perl

PDF::Template

Library

Perl module that generates PDFs from XML templates (an HTML::Template-style approach) using PDFlib as the rendering backend, with precise element positioning, parameter substitution with hierarchical scoping, automatic page breaks accounting for headers/footers, and one header/footer per page definition.

Stale
PHP

PHPWord

Library

Writes and reads OOXML (Word 2007+), ODF (ODT), RTF, HTML, and PDF documents: sections with headers/footers/page numbering, styled text runs and paragraphs, tables, images (local/remote/watermark), drawing shapes, charts (pie/bar/line/area/scatter/radar), OLE objects, TOCs, footnotes/endnotes, form fields, lists, template-based generation, and XSL transforms.

PHP

TCPDF

Library

Pure-PHP PDF/barcode generation library covering PDF/barcode generation, text/graphics, digital signatures, form fields, password/public-key encryption, and HTML/CSS rendering.

Depreciated
PHP

tc-lib-pdf

Library

UTF-8/RTL text with TrueType/OpenType/Type1/CID-0 font support and subsetting; HTML/CSS and SVG rendering with multi-column layouts, headers/footers, bookmarks, and TOC; JPEG/PNG/SVG images (plus GIF/BMP/TIFF/etc. via GD); RC4/AES-256 encryption; PAdES/PKCS#7 digital signatures with RFC 3161 TSA timestamps and LTV; PDF/A, PDF/X, and PDF/UA compliance modes; page import/reordering; AcroForm fields; and companion-package barcode support.

PHP

PdfParser

Library

Parses PDF objects/headers to extract text (page by page) and metadata (author, description, etc.), with support for compressed PDFs, Mac OS Roman charset encoding, and hex/octal-encoded text. Does not support secured/encrypted documents or form data extraction.

PHP

mPDF

Library

Generates PDFs from UTF-8 HTML (including CJK content): headers/footers, page numbering, TOC, color handling, embedded fonts, zlib-compressed output, XML-driven charset conversion, basic SVG, and optional barcode generation (via bcmath). Notably lacks state-of-the-art CSS support compared to headless-Chrome-based alternatives.

PHP

browsershot

DriverLibrary

PHP package that drives headless Chrome (via Puppeteer) to convert a URL, HTML string, or local HTML file into a PDF or image; can also extract the rendered HTML body after JavaScript execution and list all network requests the page triggered.

PHP

Snappy

DriverLibrary

PHP wrapper around wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltoimage that generates PDFs or image snapshots/thumbnails from URLs or HTML, merges multiple URLs into a single PDF, supports XSL-based tables of contents, and passes through wkhtmltox options (page size, margins, cookies, JS); includes Symfony, Laravel, and Zend Framework integrations.

PHP

Laravel PDF

Library

Laravel wrapper around mPDF: renders Blade views to PDF with data binding, custom headers/footers with page numbering, custom TTF fonts, document permission protection (copy/print/modify/extract/assemble), and per-file config overrides, with output via string, save, download, or browser stream.

DepreciatedStale
PHP

Dompdf

Library

Pure-PHP (no external PDF library) HTML-to-PDF converter: CSS 2.1 (with some CSS3) including @import/@media/@page rules, most presentational HTML 4.0 attributes, external/inline stylesheets, complex table rendering (spans, border models), GIF/PNG/BMP/JPEG images, basic SVG, inline PHP, and embedded fonts (bundled DejaVu TrueType for Unicode). Does not support CSS Flexbox/Grid or multi-page table cells.

PHP

Laravel Dompdf

Library

Laravel wrapper around Dompdf: converts HTML strings, files, or Blade views to PDF with paper size/orientation, DPI, fonts, CSS page breaks, and UTF-8 support; generates PDF/A-3b compliant output with embedded files and XMP metadata (for Zugferd/Factur-X e-invoicing); toggles JS/remote-content/PHP execution; outputs to disk, browser stream, download, or string.

PHP

Html2Pdf

Library

Converts specially-cleaned HTML (not arbitrary web pages) into PDF using TCPDF as the underlying engine, for generating documents like invoices and documentation; requires the gd and mbstring PHP extensions. Not designed to render existing websites or WYSIWYG-generated HTML directly.

PHP

pdf-to-image

DriverLibrary

Converts PDFs (via ImageMagick + Ghostscript) to JPG/JPEG/PNG/WebP images: render specific or all pages, control quality/DPI/dimensions/background color, read page count and page dimensions, and handle password-protected PDFs (requires ImageMagick 7).

PHP

FPDF

Library

Free PHP class for generating PDF files in pure PHP, with no PDF library/extension dependency.

PHP

laravel-snappy

Library

Laravel wrapper around the Snappy library: generates PDFs or images from HTML strings, files, or Laravel views, with output to file/browser/download, wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltoimage option passthrough (paper size, orientation, margins), and a fake mode for testing without real rendering.

PHP

phpgearbox/pdf

DriverLibrary

Generates PDFs two ways: DOCX templating (variable substitution like `${FOO}`, block cloning, table row duplication, then converted to PDF) or HTML-to-PDF via PhantomJS.

DepreciatedStale
Python

pikepdf

Library

Pythonic wrapper around qpdf for reading, writing, and manipulating PDFs: merge, split, rotate, rearrange, and delete pages; read/write XMP and DocumentInfo metadata (auto-synced); losslessly extract or replace embedded images (preserving original JPEG compression); open password-protected files and save with RC4, AES-128, or AES-256 encryption (or remove it); linearize for 'fast web view'; direct object-level/content-stream access; automatic repair on open; access to qpdf's Job API; and Jupyter notebook preview rendering.

Python

PyFPDF

Library

Python port of the PHP FPDF library for generating PDFs: Unicode (UTF-8) TrueType font subset embedding, I2of5/Code39 barcodes (QR planned), PNG/GIF/JPG images (incl. transparency/alpha), and templates with a visual designer plus basic HTML-to-PDF.

Python

PDF Craft

Library

Converts scanned-book PDFs to Markdown or EPUB using OCR (DeepSeek OCR locally, or DeepSeek/Baidu vendor backends), recognizing complex structure including tables and formulas; extracts body text while filtering headers/footers, preserves footnotes/images/assets, auto-generates an EPUB table of contents (optionally LLM-enhanced), and offers configurable table (HTML/image) and formula (MathML/SVG/image) rendering. Runs fully offline as of v1.0.0.

Python

PDFQuery

Library

Python library (built on pdfminer, lxml, and pyquery) for scraping PDF data using jQuery-like or XPath selectors: select elements by bounding-box location or text content, bulk-extract multiple fields at once, target specific page ranges, batch-process multiple PDFs, and cache parsed results for speed.

Stale
Python

pypdf

Library

Pure-Python PDF library: split, merge, crop, and transform pages; add passwords/encryption and decrypt (with optional AES support); read and add metadata; extract text; read and create annotations; and attach custom data/viewer settings. Companion CLI tool `pdfly` offers additional command-line operations.

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

rinohtype

Library

Pure-Python, batch-mode document processor that renders reStructuredText or CommonMark to PDF (and can run as a Sphinx builder in place of LaTeX): page layout with columns, running headers/footers, floats and footnotes; auto-generated TOC and index; auto-numbered/cross-referenced headings, figures, and tables; OpenType/TrueType/Type1 fonts with kerning/ligatures/small-caps (incl. 1000+ bundled Google Fonts); embedded PDF/PNG/JPEG images with preserved transparency/color profiles; and optional math typesetting.

Python

pdfplumber

Library

Extracts text (with layout preservation, tolerance settings, regex search, and word bounding boxes), detects and extracts tables (via ruling-line or text-alignment strategies), and provides low-level access to characters, lines, rectangles, curves, images, annotations, hyperlinks, and form fields, with page cropping/filtering, password-protected PDF support, and visual debugging (page-to-image rendering with overlay annotations, incl. Jupyter display). Does not generate, modify, or OCR PDFs.

Python

Marker

Library

Converts PDFs, images, PPTX, DOCX, XLSX, HTML, and EPUB to Markdown, JSON, HTML, or chunks, preserving reading order: reconstructs tables (heuristics with VLM fallback for complex cases), recognizes math/equations as LaTeX, extracts and saves images, performs multilingual OCR via the Surya VLM, strips headers/footers/artifacts, and can optionally use an LLM to improve accuracy.

Python

pdf-diff

Library

Compares the text layers of two PDFs and outputs the bounding boxes of changed text as JSON, then rasterizes the changed pages to a PNG with red outlines drawn around the differences.

Python

invoice2data

Library

Extracts structured data from invoice PDFs: pulls text via pdftotext, pdfminer, or OCR (tesseract/tesseract4/Google Cloud Vision), then matches fields (invoice number, date, amount, line items) using regex patterns defined in per-supplier YAML templates; exports to CSV, JSON, XML, or renames files based on extracted content; supports batch folder processing.

Stale
Python

PDFDocument

Library

Django-friendly wrapper around ReportLab for generating PDFs: report and letter templates (including a confidential-report variant with security markings), headings/paragraphs/lists/tables/rules/spacers/page breaks, a predefined style system, SVG drawing (via svglib), watermarks/confidentiality markers, mini-HTML markup, and direct ReportLab canvas access.

Stale
Python

Python-PDFKit

DriverLibrary

Python wrapper around wkhtmltopdf: converts HTML from URLs, files, or strings (single or multiple at once) to PDF, with configurable wkhtmltopdf options, TOC generation, cover pages, external CSS, and HTML meta-tag-based settings.

DepreciatedStale
Python

OCRmyPDF

CliDriverLibrary

Adds a searchable OCR text layer beneath page images and produces a validated PDF/A file: deskews crooked pages, optionally cleans images pre-OCR, optimizes/compresses images, recognizes 100+ languages via Tesseract, rotates misrotated pages, edits output metadata, parallelizes across CPU cores, and processes multi-thousand-page files in place.

Python

pdfrw

Library

Reads and writes PDFs: subset/merge/rotate pages, modify metadata, build reusable Form XObjects, N-up and booklet layouts, watermarking (overlay/underlay), image and Form-XObject extraction, poster-sized output, and splitting 2-up PDFs; integrates with ReportLab (embedding existing PDF content into newly generated documents) and rst2pdf. No encryption/decryption support, and limited compression-filter support (external tools like pdftk needed for full decompression).

Stale
Python

Pdfminer.six

Library

Pure-Python PDF-1.7 parser/extraction library: text, images, HTML, or hOCR output with exact text location/font/color data; AcroForm and tagged-content extraction; outline/TOC extraction; embedded image extraction (JPG, PNG, TIFF, JBIG2, bitmaps); CJK and vertical-writing support; Type1/TrueType/Type3/CID fonts; RC4/AES decryption; and decoding of ASCIIHex/ASCII85/LZW/Flate/RunLength/CCITTFax compression filters.

Python

PDFMiner

Library

Original PDFMiner: text extraction with location/font/size data, layout analysis, format conversion (HTML/XML), outline (TOC) extraction, RC4/AES decryption, and multi-font/CJK support.

DepreciatedStale
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.

Python

WeasyPrint

Library

Python library that renders HTML and CSS to PDF using a custom Python-built CSS layout/pagination engine (not WebKit/Gecko), targeting print-oriented CSS/HTML standards for generating reports, invoices, tickets, and similar structured documents.

Python

xhtml2pdf

Library

Pure-Python HTML-to-PDF converter (built on ReportLab, html5lib, and pypdf) supporting HTML5 and CSS 2.1 (with some CSS3), with cairo or legacy RenderPM graphics backends for bitmap/vector output.

Python

pdftabextract

Library

Toolkit for extracting tabular data from OCR'd ('sandwich') PDFs already converted to pdf2xml format: splits scanned double pages, detects lines via image processing, corrects page skew/rotation, clusters lines/text into table columns and rows, and exports to pandas DataFrames (CSV, Excel, etc.). Not an OCR tool itself — requires pre-OCR'd input from Tesseract/ABBYY; the authors recommend trying `pdftotext` first.

DepreciatedStale
Python

doc2text

Library

Extracts higher-quality OCR text from poorly scanned PDFs and images (PDF, PNG, JPG, BMP, TIFF) by fixing common scan errors: crops to estimated text regions, deskews tilted pages, and optimizes images before running Tesseract OCR; supports bulk processing (splitting multi-page PDFs) and language-code hints for accuracy.

Stale
Python

pdf2docx

CliGuiLibrary

Converts PDF files to DOCX (Word) format, preserving formatting and layout, and extracts tables; offers both CLI and GUI.

Python

pdf2image

Library

Wraps Poppler's `pdftoppm`/`pdftocairo` to convert PDFs (whole documents or page ranges) into PIL Image objects: PPM/JPEG/PNG output, multi-threaded batch conversion, grayscale mode, custom sizing, and password-protected PDF support.

Stale
Python

PDFMathTranslate

CliDockerGuiLibraryPlugin

Translates scientific PDF documents while preserving layout, formulas, charts, tables of contents, and annotations; supports Google Translate, DeepL, Ollama, OpenAI, and other translation backends via CLI, GUI, Docker, or a Zotero plugin, with batch/directory translation and partial-document translation.

Python

Donut

Library

OCR-free document-understanding transformer (PyTorch/Hugging Face) that classifies document types, extracts structured information (e.g. from receipts), answers questions about document content, and reads text sequences directly from document images without a separate OCR engine.

Stale
Python

Nougat

Library

Neural OCR model (Meta/Facebook Research) that parses academic PDF papers into Markdown (.mmd), understanding LaTeX math and tables; supports single or batch PDF processing, page-range selection, and failure-detection heuristics for problematic pages.

Python

MinerU

CliLibraryServerWeb App

Converts PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, images, and web pages into Markdown or JSON: strips headers/footers/page numbers while preserving structure, converts formulas to LaTeX and tables to HTML, OCRs scanned/garbled PDFs in 109 languages, handles single/multi-column and complex layouts (incl. cross-page table merging), and extracts images with captions. Offers CLI, FastAPI, and Gradio WebUI, plus Python/Go/TypeScript SDKs; builds on PDF-Extract-Kit's models.

Python

PDF-Extract-Kit

Library

Model toolbox for extracting content from complex PDFs: layout detection (images/tables/text/titles/formulas), formula detection and LaTeX recognition, OCR with text location, and table recognition to LaTeX/HTML/Markdown. Provides the underlying models that MinerU builds its PDF-to-Markdown application on top of.

Python

pypdfium2

BindingsLibrary

Python ctypes bindings to Google's PDFium: renders pages to images, extracts text, reads metadata/bookmarks/page properties, creates new PDFs and inserts images/pages, and searches for text — with both convenience helper classes and raw PDFium API access.

Python

Unstructured

DriverLibrary

Open-source ETL library that converts complex documents (including PDFs) into clean, structured data for LLM ingestion: PDF text extraction, OCR on scanned pages (via tesseract-ocr/poppler-utils), document layout detection, and partitioning into logical elements via a single `partition()` auto-detection function.

Python

ReportLab

Library

Open-source Python library for programmatic PDF generation: precise low-level canvas drawing (text, vector graphics, images) plus a higher-level Platypus layout engine (flowables, paragraphs, tables, automatic pagination) for building complex reports and documents; widely used as the rendering engine underneath other PDF tools (e.g. the included PDFDocument wrapper).

Python

fpdf2

Library

Unicode TrueType font subset embedding, cell/multi-cell/plaintext writing with automatic page breaks, optional Markdown-like text styling, image embedding with transparency, SVG import, arbitrary path drawing, table generation, internal/external links, barcodes/charts/emoji, document encryption and digital signing, annotations (highlights, file attachments), HTML-to-PDF conversion, basic math rendering, and TOC/outline generation.

Python

borb

Library

Pure-Python library for reading, creating, and manipulating PDFs, modeling the file as a JSON-like structure of nested lists/dictionaries/primitives for programmatic access.

Python

Layout Parser

Library

Deep-learning toolkit for document image layout analysis: detects layout elements (text blocks, titles, tables, figures) using pre-trained models, filters/crops regions by spatial location, loads layout data from JSON/CSV/PDF, runs OCR on detected regions, and visualizes detected layouts.

Python

deepdoctection

Library

Apache-2.0 orchestration framework for document AI: combines layout detection and table recognition (via Detectron2/Transformers), OCR (Tesseract, DocTr, or AWS Textract), and document/token classification (LayoutLM family, LiLT, BERT-style models) into configurable pipelines for scanned documents and PDFs.

Python

pydoxtools

Library

Pipeline library for extracting information from unstructured documents with low memory/CPU overhead: PDF table extraction, image analysis with OCR, document question-answering via LLM integration, vector index creation, and support for most common document formats.

R

fulltext

Library

rOpenSci package for searching and retrieving full-text academic articles across open-access and subscription journals: Crossref metadata lookup, PDF text extraction, academic-document XML parsing, and text mining.

DepreciatedStale
R

pdftools

BindingsLibrary

R bindings for extracting content from PDFs: `pdf_text()` for per-page text, `pdf_info()` for metadata (author, creation date, tags), `pdf_toc()` for table of contents/section headers, `pdf_fonts()` for font info, embedded-attachment access, and `pdf_render_page()` to rasterize pages to bitmap (e.g. PNG/WEBP). Does not handle table extraction (recommends the `tabulizer`/`tabulapdf` package) or OCR of scanned text (recommends the `tesseract` package).

R

tabulapdf

BindingsLibrary

R bindings to the Tabula Java library (an R clone of the Tabula CLI) that computationally extracts tables from PDF documents via `extract_tables()`, returning results as R tibbles/data frames. Requires a Java runtime (rJava, OpenJDK 11 recommended).

Ruby

Wicked PDF

DriverLibraryPlugin

Rails plugin that uses wkhtmltopdf to render standard HTML views (or raw HTML/URLs/files) as PDF, avoiding a specialized PDF DSL: `format.pdf` controller responses, saving/emailing PDFs, CSS styling and JS execution, custom headers/footers, Rack middleware for `.pdf`-suffixed URLs, and an HTML debug-preview mode.

Ruby

PDFKit

DriverLibrary

Ruby gem that generates PDFs from HTML+CSS via wkhtmltopdf (WebKit rendering): converts HTML strings, URLs, or files; attaches stylesheets; passes cookies; configures default/global wkhtmltopdf options; and provides Rack/Rails middleware for `.pdf`-suffixed routes with forced-download support.

Stale
Ruby

Prawn

Library

Pure-Ruby PDF generation library: vector drawing (lines, polygons, curves, ellipses); flowing text with inline formatting, builtin/embedded TrueType fonts, UTF-8, RTL, and fallback fonts; PNG/JPG image embedding; a basic grid layout system; encryption and password protection; repeatable headers/footers/page numbers; PDF outlines; and low-level PDF object access for extensions. Explicitly not an HTML-to-PDF generator, though it offers limited inline styling.

Ruby

Grover

DriverLibraryPlugin

Ruby gem that uses Puppeteer/headless Chromium (or Firefox) to convert URLs, inline HTML, local files, or Rails view templates into PDF, PNG, or JPEG: configurable page layout/margins/viewport, cookies/headers, CSS/JS injection, cover pages, HTTP basic auth, remote-browser connections, wait conditions (network idle, element visibility), and Rack middleware for URL-extension-triggered conversion.

Ruby

FerrumPdf

Library

Rails-oriented gem (headless Chrome via Ferrum, no Node.js dependency) that renders HTML/URLs to PDF (`render ferrum_pdf: {}`) with paper size/margin/orientation/scale options and dynamic headers/footers, or captures PNG/JPEG screenshots (`render ferrum_screenshot: {}`) of the full page, viewport, or a CSS-selected element.

Ruby

PDF::Reader

Library

Low-level Ruby library for programmatic PDF access (not a renderer): document version, metadata/info, and page count; per-page text and font extraction; raw page content access; direct PDF object access via ObjectHash; custom receiver objects to walk page rendering programs; UTF-8 text normalization; and Ascii85 stream decoding.

Ruby

RGhost

Library

Ghostscript-based document API that generates documents programmatically and converts between PDF, PS, GIF, TIF, PNG, and JPG, with support for EPS templates and optimizations for handling large documents.

Stale
Ruby

Docsplit

CliLibrary

CLI utility and Ruby library that extracts searchable UTF-8 plain text from documents, generates page images and thumbnails in any format, splits documents into single-page or full PDFs, and extracts metadata (title, author, page count).

Ruby

HexaPDF

CliLibrary

PDF library and CLI (positioned as a pdftk/Poppler-utils alternative): creates PDFs from scratch with vector drawing, JPEG/PNG/PDF image embedding, and TrueType text with subsetting; a high-level document composition engine (automatic layout, text flow, page breaks, lists, multi-column, reusable styles); modifies and merges existing PDFs; creates AcroForms with Adobe-like appearances; adds annotations, outlines, and file attachments; extracts metadata/text/images/files; encrypts (incl. PDF 2.0 AES-256) and digitally signs; and optimizes file size with object validation.

Ruby

Yomu

Library

Ruby library built on Apache Tika that extracts text, metadata (as a hash, e.g. Content-Type), and MIME type from PDFs, Microsoft Office, OpenDocument, Apple iWork, and RTF files; accepts local paths, remote URLs, streams, or raw binary data as input.

Stale
Ruby

pdf-extract

Library

Tool and library for extracting distinct text areas from PDFs, particularly scholarly article PDFs (e.g. isolating body text, references, headers from the rest of the document).

DepreciatedStale
Ruby

InvoicePrinter

CliLibraryServer

Pure-Ruby (no external system libraries) invoice-PDF generator, usable as a library, CLI, or server: A4/US Letter formats, purchaser/provider info boxes with addresses and tax IDs, SWIFT/IBAN payment details, itemized tables (description/quantity/price/tax/totals), automatic page numbering, customizable labels, custom fonts/logos/backgrounds/stamps/signatures/QR codes, and JSON-driven invoice data — fast enough for real-time request handling.

Ruby

PDF::Inspector

Library

PDF::Reader-based analysis library (built primarily to support Prawn's test suite, but usable on any PDF) that extracts text as an array of per-operation string fragments and counts document pages.

Ruby

Princely

Library

Rails wrapper around the PrinceXML PDF generator: renders PDF templates via a `:pdf` render option, registers PDF as a respond_to MIME type, provides a `make_and_send_pdf` helper, and supports custom layouts/stylesheets/locals, asset path rewriting, inline/attachment disposition, JS and PDF-form flags, and configurable timeouts.

Ruby

Grim

Library

Ruby gem (using ImageMagick and Ghostscript) that extracts a PDF page as an image (e.g. PNG) or as page text, reports total page count, and iterates all pages in batch, with configurable image width/density/quality/colorspace/alpha and custom processor paths.

Stale
Ruby

CombinePDF

Library

Pure-Ruby (no external dependencies) library to merge PDFs, extract and recombine specific pages, overlay watermarks/stamps (e.g. logos), and add customizable page numbering; parses PDFs from files, memory, or remote sources. The maintainer has stepped back from active maintenance and is seeking a new steward.

Depreciated
Ruby

squid

Library

Extends the Prawn PDF library with a `chart()` method for drawing bar/line/other graphs directly into PDF documents from hash-based data.

Stale
Ruby

gambas

Library

Rails gem that renders inline PDFs from normal Rails view templates (`.pdf.prawn` / `.pdf.erb`) using the Prawn library, exposing a `pdf` object in views with global or per-document configuration and metadata (title, author, page size).

Stale
Ruby

Ruby/Poppler

BindingsLibrary

Ruby-GNOME project's binding of poppler-glib, exposing Poppler's PDF rendering/parsing capabilities (text/image extraction, rendering, metadata) to Ruby. Requires the system poppler-glib library.

Rust

pdf-rs

Library

Rust library to read, manipulate, and write PDF files: stable reading with examples for extracting content/metadata/names/text, plus Pathfinder integration for rendering and a companion `inspect-prim` tool for hierarchically exploring PDF structure. Modification and writing support are still experimental.

Scala

sPDF

DriverLibrary

Scala wrapper around wkhtmltopdf that generates PDFs from HTML/CSS/JS: accepts input as files, streams, URLs, Scala XML elements, or raw strings; writes to files or output streams; supports wkhtmltopdf's extended parameters (orientation, page size, margins); referenced images/stylesheets; async conversion via Scala `Future`; and a `WrappedPdf` mode for headless environments (e.g. via xvfb-run).

Stale
Scala

PDFFigures 2.0

Library

Extracts figures, tables, captions, figure names/numbers, section titles, and in-figure text from scholarly (computer science) PDFs, with page location and bounding boxes; renders extracted figures as raster (PNG/JPEG) or vector (SVG/PS/EPS, via pdftocairo) images; supports multi-threaded batch processing and includes debugging visualization tools.

Stale
Swift

PDFGenerator

Library

Swift/iOS library that generates PDFs from UIViews (including full scrollable content of UIScrollView/UITableView/UICollectionView/UIWebView), UIImages, image file paths/binary data, CGImages, or blank pages; supports multi-page output to Data or disk, custom DPI (72/300), and password protection with separate user/owner passwords.

Stale