SHSelfHostIndex

OCRmyPDF vs Stirling PDF

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 ST Stirling PDF Powerful locally hosted web-based PDF toolkit
FeatureOCRmyPDFStirling PDF
CategoryDocument ManagementDocument Management
LicenseMPL-2.0MIT
LanguagePythonJava
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM512 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, binary, bare-metaldocker, bare-metal, source
GitHub stars★ 34,391★ 89,077
First released20152023
ReplacesAdobe AcrobatAdobe Acrobat, Smallpdf

Why pick each one

Choose OCRmyPDF if…

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

Choose Stirling PDF if…

  • Keeps documents private
  • Huge range of features
Stirling PDF details

Frequently asked questions

Is OCRmyPDF or Stirling PDF better?

Neither is universally better. Stirling PDF has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are OCRmyPDF and Stirling PDF free and open-source?

Yes. OCRmyPDF is licensed under MPL-2.0 and Stirling PDF under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run OCRmyPDF and Stirling PDF with Docker?

OCRmyPDF: yes. Stirling PDF: yes.

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