Open Source PDF Tools
PDF, or Portable Document Format, is a standard for sharing documents while preserving their layout across devices and operating systems. PDF tools help people create, read, edit, combine, and convert documents, as well as extract text, tables, and images. They can also process scanned pages, apply optical character recognition, and prepare document content for search or analysis.
Open source tools in this area include libraries for generating and modifying PDFs, viewers and embedding components, and utilities for parsing documents or extracting data. When choosing one, consider supported features and file types, license terms, maintenance activity, performance, security needs, and compatibility with your language or workflow. These tools are useful to developers building document features, researchers handling collections, and organizations automating document-heavy processes.
29 repositories · updated October 4, 2026
pdfminer.six: Extract and Analyze Content from PDFs
pdfminer.six is a Python library and command-line tool for extracting and analyzing content from PDF files. Use it when you need text, layout details, images, or document structure from PDFs in a Python workflow.
pdf-inspector: Classify PDFs and Extract Text as Markdown
pdf-inspector is a Rust library and set of bindings for classifying PDFs, extracting positioned text, and converting documents to Markdown. It helps processing pipelines route scanned pages to OCR while handling text-based pages locally.
Free-OReilly-Books: Browse Free O’Reilly Technical Books
A categorized index of free O’Reilly titles covering programming, data, IoT, web operations, security, and business. Use it to find links to available PDF, EPUB, and MOBI editions.
ds-cheatsheets: Find Data Science Reference Sheets
A curated collection of data science cheat sheets covering Python, R, statistics, machine learning, deep learning, big data, SQL, and visualization. Use it to quickly find practical PDF and image references across common tools and workflows.
docling: Convert Documents into Structured Content
Docling converts PDFs and many other document formats into structured representations and exports such as Markdown and JSON. It is suited to developers building document ingestion workflows for search, analytics, and generative AI, including local processing of sensitive files.
vue-pdf-embed: Display PDF Documents in Vue Apps
A Vue component for rendering PDF documents inside web applications, with optional text and annotation layers, search, and document controls. It suits Vue teams that need an integrated viewer rather than a separate PDF page or browser plugin.
QuestPDF: Generate PDF Documents with C#
QuestPDF is a C# library for creating structured PDF documents through a fluent, component-based API. It suits .NET developers building reports, invoices, and other data-driven documents without relying on HTML-to-PDF conversion.
rachoon: Self-Host Invoicing for Small Businesses
Rachoon is a self-hosted invoicing web app for freelancers and small businesses. It manages clients, invoices, quotations, and payments, with PDF export and support for custom templates, currencies, and taxes.
opendataloader-pdf: Extract Structured Data and Accessibility Tags from PDFs
OpenDataLoader PDF parses digital, scanned, and tagged PDFs into structured formats for AI and document workflows. It also automates conversion of untagged PDFs into Tagged PDFs, with optional hybrid processing for complex documents.
Article-Assistant--RAG-Telegram-Bot: Ask Questions About Documents
A Telegram bot that turns web articles, PDFs, text files, and YouTube transcripts into searchable knowledge bases. It uses retrieval-augmented generation to answer questions with source citations and can also create summaries.
docling: Parse Documents for AI Workflows
Docling converts documents from formats such as PDF, Office files, images, and audio into structured representations and exports. It suits developers building document-processing and generative AI pipelines that need format coverage, OCR, or local execution.
ImageToolbox: Edit, Convert, and Process Images on Android
ImageToolbox is a feature-rich Android app for photo editing, image conversion, OCR, PDF tasks, and other media workflows. It suits users who want many image utilities in one place, with distribution through Google Play, F-Droid, and GitHub releases.