Zpdf
Ranked 5 of 8 document parsers by recommenders
Fast PDF text extraction library in Zig, reported several times faster than MuPDF and MIT licensed. Critics say it is vibe coded, untested, and crashes on some files.
Fast PDF text extraction library in Zig, reported several times faster than MuPDF and MIT licensed. Critics say it is vibe coded, untested, and crashes on some files.
14 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 57%
Recommended in 1 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 1 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not 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
Much faster than MuPDF
“5x speed improvements on pdf text extraction might be great for some applications”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF” “Impressive performance gains! 5x faster than MuPDF is significant”
Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF” “significantly faster than MuPDF for text extraction workloads”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF” - Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Vibe coded, untested code concerns
“I would worry about its longevity as a vibe coded project”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF” “I'm not convinced that projects vibe coded over the evening deserve the HN front page”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF” “it looka like the author didn't even test the AI output on real PDF”
Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF” - Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF”
- Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF”
- Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF”
Crashes and memory errors
“I tried a small PDF and got a memory error.”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF” “it segfaults on every single one”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF” Messy output, spacing problems
“Is indeed faster but output is messier. And doesn't handle Unicode in contrast to mutool that does.”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF” “The spacing issue isn't working quite right yet.”
Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF” Benefit over MuPDF questioned
“I think it's fair to say it's not “legitimately useful” except as a way for the author to fill his resume”
Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF” “Couldn't the cycles have just been spent on trying to make muPDF better?”
Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF”
Other document parsers people recommend
The four most recommended other document parsers, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pandoc | 142 | 28 | 84% | 13 | 10 yrs6 owners | Approved |
| Tesseract OCR | 32 | 28 | 53% | 12 | — | — |
| Docling | 19 | 4 | 83% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Mozilla Readability | 10 | 1 | 91% | 6 | — | Approved |
| ZpdfThis page | 8 | 6 | 57% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
18 of the 21 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it looka like the author didn't even test the AI output on real PDF”
“The spacing issue isn't working quite right yet.”
“And you didn't even bother testing it before submitting.”
“Speed wasn't even compromised. Still 5x when benching.”
“I think it's fair to say it's not “legitimately useful” except as a way for the author to fill his resume”
“These vibe coded tests are terrible”
“Impressive performance gains! 5x faster than MuPDF is significant”
“Couldn't the cycles have just been spent on trying to make muPDF better?”
“I tried a small PDF and got a memory error.”
“it segfaults on every single one”
“Is indeed faster but output is messier. And doesn't handle Unicode in contrast to mutool that does.”
“I would worry about its longevity as a vibe coded project”
“5x speed improvements on pdf text extraction might be great for some applications”
“I'm not convinced that projects vibe coded over the evening deserve the HN front page”
“it feels like the entire project has been vibe coded”
“it's very nice to see this is MIT”
“excellent stuff what makes zig so fast”
“significantly faster than MuPDF for text extraction workloads”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.