Stirling PDF
Shares rank 4 of 7 PDF tools by recommenders
Free, self-hosted, open-source PDF toolkit praised for accurate OCR that keeps formatting and easy redaction. Caveat: a commenter is wary of its new pricing and licensing.
Free, self-hosted, open-source PDF toolkit praised for accurate OCR that keeps formatting and easy redaction. Caveat: a commenter is wary of its new pricing and licensing.
6 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Accurate OCR that keeps formatting
“is a free self-hosted PDF tool that can do very accurate OCR while keeping the formatting”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th” “where you can do very accurate OCR while keep the formatting”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th” Free and open source
“is a free self-hosted PDF tool that can do very accurate OCR while keeping the formatting”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th” “Open source and has been in development for a couple of years, at least”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Pdfwithlove – PDF tools that run 100% locally (no uploads, no back end)” Self-hosted on your own server
“is a free self-hosted PDF tool that can do very accurate OCR while keeping the formatting”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th” “I self host Stirling-PDF for complicated tasks”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: Is there a good open-source alternative to Adobe Acrobat?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Wary of new pricing and licensing
“Bit nervous about their new pricing/licensing model but so far all the major stuff I use is in the OSS side.”
Comment from 21 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Pdfwithlove – PDF tools that run 100% locally (no uploads, no back end)”
Other PDF tools people recommend
The four most recommended other PDF tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pdfwithlove | 10 | 10 | 50% | 2 | — | — |
| qpdf | 8 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
| PaperPilot | 8 | 7 | 53% | 1 | — | — |
| Stirling PDFThis page | 6 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
| MinerU | 6 | 1 | 86% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
6 of the 7 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“where you can do very accurate OCR while keep the formatting”
“is a free self-hosted PDF tool that can do very accurate OCR while keeping the formatting”
“I self host Stirling-PDF for complicated tasks”
“Bit nervous about their new pricing/licensing model but so far all the major stuff I use is in the OSS side.”
“Open source and has been in development for a couple of years, at least”
“has a relatively robust and easy to use redaction tool”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.