SHSelfHostIndex

OCRmyPDF vs Samvera Hyrax

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted document management options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
OC OCRmyPDF Add a searchable OCR text layer to scanned PDFs VS SA Samvera Hyrax Front-end for the Samvera framework, which itself is a Ruby on Rails
FeatureOCRmyPDFSamvera Hyrax
CategoryDocument ManagementDocument Management
LicenseMPL-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguagePythonRuby
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM512 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, binary, bare-metalbare-metal
GitHub stars★ 34,391★ 202
First released20152026
ReplacesAdobe Acrobat—

Why pick each one

Choose OCRmyPDF if…

  • Excellent OCR results
  • Composes well with other tools
OCRmyPDF details

Choose Samvera Hyrax if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • Written in Ruby
  • Lightweight — runs in 512 MB RAM
Samvera Hyrax details

Frequently asked questions

Is OCRmyPDF or Samvera Hyrax better?

OCRmyPDF is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Samvera Hyrax if its specific feature set fits your needs better.

Are OCRmyPDF and Samvera Hyrax free and open-source?

Yes. OCRmyPDF is licensed under MPL-2.0 and Samvera Hyrax under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run OCRmyPDF and Samvera Hyrax with Docker?

OCRmyPDF: yes. Samvera Hyrax: check the project docs for container support.

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