Stirling PDF
Locally hosted web application for PDF manipulation with 50+ operations. Split, merge, compress, OCR, convert, watermark, and sign PDFs with nothing sent to external servers
Quick Start
docker run -d -p 8080:8080 -v stirling-pdf:/configs frooodle/s-pdf:latest Overview
Stirling PDF is a self-hosted web application that handles PDF manipulation locally. The premise is straightforward: stop uploading sensitive documents to ILovePDF, SmallPDF, or Adobe’s online tools, and run the same operations on your own server instead. Contracts, invoices, tax documents, and client files never leave your infrastructure.
The operation list covers what most people need day-to-day: splitting multi-page PDFs, merging separate files, compressing oversized documents, rotating pages, removing or reordering pages, adding watermarks, flattening forms, and signing. OCR via Tesseract converts scanned documents into searchable PDFs. Format conversion handles PDF to and from Word, Excel, HTML, and image formats.
The UI runs entirely in the browser and is accessible from any device on your network. There is nothing to install on individual machines. Share the URL with a team and everyone gets access to the same PDF toolbox without needing software licences on individual computers.
The privacy argument is the main reason people choose Stirling PDF over web-based alternatives. Professional documents carry information you probably do not want processed by third-party servers: client agreements, financial statements, medical records, legal correspondence. Local processing eliminates that exposure entirely.
Limitations are mostly at the edges. Complex PDF-to-Word conversions do not always preserve formatting perfectly on documents with heavy design work. OCR is accurate on clean, well-scanned documents and degrades on low-resolution or skewed scans. These are not flaws specific to Stirling PDF — they reflect the state of open-source PDF tooling generally.
Stirling PDF: Pros & Cons
| Pros (The Wins) | Cons (The Friction) |
|---|---|
| 50+ operations: Split, merge, OCR, compress, convert, sign — one tool. | Conversion quality: PDF-to-Word on complex layouts produces imperfect results. |
| Fully local: Sensitive documents never uploaded to external servers. | No batch automation: Operations are one-at-a-time through the UI by default. |
| Browser-based UI: No software installs; share across a whole team. | OCR limitations: Quality depends on source scan resolution and quality. |
| 79.7k stars: Fast-growing tool with frequent new features. | Slow on low-power hardware: OCR on long documents can take significant time. |
Use Cases
Specific ways to use Stirling PDF for your workflow.
Deployment Strategy
Recommended ways to host Stirling PDF in your own environment.