# qpdf

8 Hacker News commenters recommended qpdf and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free command-line tool for decompressing, restructuring and encrypting PDF files, also usable as a C++ library. Commenters report no recurring criticism.

## Why people recommend it

- Inspects and edits PDF internals (3 comments): "If you're worried about double-compression of image data, you can uncompress all images by using qpdf" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46726595)) "Tools like qpdf makes it easy to edit a .pdf file in a text editor too." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46384652)) "my needs are met by using `qpdf` to export QDF" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46565528))
- Encrypts PDFs from the command line (2 comments): "the qpdf cli for occasional stranger (particularly encryption-related) things" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46773923)) "On Linux/*BSD you can use qpdf to encrypt any pdf." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46535366))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Pdfwithlove](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pdfwithlove.md): 10 recommend
- [PaperPilot](https://hackerapproved.com/p/paperpilot.md): 8 recommend
- [MinerU](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mineru.md): 6 recommend
- [Marker by Datalab](https://hackerapproved.com/p/marker.md): 6 recommend
- [Stirling PDF](https://hackerapproved.com/p/stirling-pdf.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "qpdf", https://hackerapproved.com/p/qpdf/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).