Self-hosted alternatives to Adobe Acrobat
Want PDF editing without handing your data to Adobe Acrobat? These 10 self-hosted apps run on your own server. Cheapest estimated hosting starts at about $5/month.
About Adobe Acrobat: Adobe's PDF editor and reader.
| App | Health | Stars | License | Docker | RAM (est.) | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stirling-PDF | Active | 95.8k | Apache-2.0 | ✓ | 2 GB | $10/mo |
| Paperless-ngx | Active | 47.7k | GPL-3.0 | ✓ | 2 GB | $10/mo |
| BentoPDF | Active | 16.3k | AGPL-3.0 | ✓ | 2 GB | $10/mo |
| Gotenberg | Active | 13.5k | MIT | ✓ | 2 GB | $10/mo |
| OmniTools | Active | 10.6k | MIT | ✓ | 1 GB | $5/mo |
| SnapOtter | Active | 2.9k | AGPL-3.0 | ✓ | 2 GB | $10/mo |
| Signature PDF | Active | 832 | AGPL-3.0 | ✓ | 2 GB | $10/mo |
| OpenReader | Active | 555 | MIT | ✓ | 1 GB | $5/mo |
| I, Librarian | Maintained | 356 | GPL-3.0 | – | 2 GB | $10/mo |
| PdfDing | Active | 24 | AGPL-3.0 | ✓ | 2 GB | $10/mo |
The options in detail
1. Stirling-PDF
Local hosted web application that allows you to perform various operations on PDF files, such as merging, splitting, file conversions and OCR.
Active Last commit 2026-11-04. Latest release v3.2.2 (2026-10-24). Needs roughly 2 GB RAM. How to run it →
2. Paperless-ngx
Scan, index, and archive all of your paper documents with an improved interface (fork of Paperless).
Active Last commit 2026-11-04. Latest release v3.4.2 (2026-11-03). Needs roughly 2 GB RAM. How to run it →
3. BentoPDF
Powerful, privacy-first, client-side PDF toolkit that allows you to manipulate, edit, merge, and process PDF files directly in your browser.
Active Last commit 2026-11-04. 10+ releases in the past year. Latest release v2.8.11 (2026-10-31). Needs roughly 2 GB RAM. How to run it →
4. Gotenberg
Developer-friendly API to interact with powerful tools like Chromium and LibreOffice for converting numerous document formats (HTML, Markdown, Word, Excel, etc.) into PDF files, and more.
Active Last commit 2026-11-02. 10+ releases in the past year. Latest release v8.39.0 (2026-10-27). Needs roughly 2 GB RAM. How to run it →
5. OmniTools
Collection of powerful web-based tools for everyday tasks (coding, manipulating images/videos, PDFs or crunching numbers...).
Active Last commit 2026-10-24. Latest release v0.7.0 (2026-10-20). Needs roughly 1 GB RAM. How to run it →
6. SnapOtter
Suite of 200+ web tools for converting and editing images, videos, audio and PDFs, including a layer-based image editor, OCR, transcription, background removal and batch processing pipelines (alternative to SmallPDF, iLovePDF, CloudConvert).
Active Last commit 2026-11-05. Latest release v2.3.0 (2026-11-03). Needs roughly 2 GB RAM. How to run it →
7. Signature PDF
Sign and manipulate PDFs with collaboration, organization, compression and metadata editing.
Active Last commit 2026-10-21. 3 releases in the past year. Latest release v1.11.0 (2026-10-22). Needs roughly 2 GB RAM. How to run it →
8. OpenReader
EPUB, PDF, DOCX, MD, and TXT file text to speech document reader. Read documents in realtime with high-quality TTS; or extract audiobooks.
Active Last commit 2026-11-01. Latest release v5.4.1 (2026-10-30). Needs roughly 1 GB RAM. How to run it →
9. I, Librarian
Organize PDF papers and office documents. It provides a lot of extra features for students and research groups both in industry and academia.
Maintained Last commit 2025-12-02. Latest release 5.11.3 (2025-12-02). Needs roughly 2 GB RAM. How to run it →
10. PdfDing
PDF manager, viewer and editor offering a seamless user experience on multiple devices. It's designed to be minimal, fast, and easy to set up using Docker.
Active Last commit 2026-11-01. 20 releases in the past year. Latest release v1.15.0 (2026-11-01). Needs roughly 2 GB RAM. How to run it →
Why self-host instead of Adobe Acrobat?
- Own your data — it lives on a server you control, with backups you decide on.
- Predictable cost — a small VPS often replaces per-seat pricing for a whole team or family.
- No lock-in — open-source licenses let you keep running the software even if a vendor disappears.
The trade-off: you are responsible for updates, backups and security. Pick an app marked Active (a commit in the last 90 days) and with Docker support for the easiest ride.
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Other alternatives guides
Adobe Acrobat is a trademark of its owner; this site is not affiliated with it. Listings come from the community-maintained awesome-selfhosted list.