Stirlingpdf
App in the BluixApps catalog
What it is
Stirling-PDF is a locally-hosted PDF toolkit with 50+ tools in one Docker container — merge, split, rotate, OCR, sign, compress, convert, watermark, redact. Self-hosted alternative to iLovePDF, SmallPDF, Adobe Acrobat Online — your PDFs never leave your network.
The "Swiss army knife of PDF" — most comprehensive OSS PDF toolkit available.
What it's for
- PDF manipulation — merge, split, rotate, reorder, crop
- OCR scanned PDFs — Tesseract integration with 100+ languages
- PDF compression — lossless + lossy reduction
- Format conversion — PDF ↔ Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, images
- Sign + stamp + watermark — visual marks on documents
- Redact + sanitize — remove sensitive content securely
Who it's for
- Privacy-conscious users rejecting iLovePDF / SmallPDF cloud uploads
- Legal / healthcare working with sensitive documents
- Accountants / bookkeepers processing client documents
- Researchers OCRing scanned papers
- Office IT teams providing internal PDF tools
Why teams pick Stirling-PDF over alternatives
- MIT license — fully open
- 50+ tools — most comprehensive OSS PDF toolkit
- OCR built-in — Tesseract with 100+ languages
- No cloud upload — privacy by default
- Active development — frequent releases
- Beautiful UI — modern, drag-and-drop
Integrations
- OCR languages — 100+ Tesseract language packs available
- Authentication — built-in users + OAuth via
/configs/security.yml - File handling — drag-and-drop, batch upload, ZIP support
- API — REST API for programmatic use
- Pipeline mode — chain operations for batch processing
- Custom branding — drop logo + CSS in
/customFiles - i18n — multi-language UI (English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, more)
Notable users & community
- 50k+ GitHub stars (top OSS PDF tool by margin)
- Active community on Discord + GitHub
- Backed by Stirling Tools company
- Featured constantly on r/selfhosted
- Strong release cadence with new tools added regularly
Tips & operations
- OCR languages opt-in — enable via env to avoid downloading 4GB of language packs
- Authentication off by default — enable
DOCKER_ENABLE_SECURITY=truefor production - Memory-heavy ops — large PDF OCR can spike RAM; size VPS accordingly
- Persist logs — useful for troubleshooting failed operations
- Custom branding —
/customFilesmount for white-label deploys - Pipeline mode — for batch operations, define pipeline.json
What we ship in BluixApps
- Docker image:
stirlingtools/stirling-pdf:latest - Persistent volumes:
/opt/stirlingpdf/{trainingData,extraConfigs,customFiles,logs,pipeline} - 6 language packs pre-installed (en, it, fr, de, es)
- Port 8090 exposed
- Auth disabled by default (configurable via env)
- HTTPS via Let's Encrypt reverse proxy
- Backup hook covers customFiles + extraConfigs
Get this app — pick a BluixApps plan
Same catalog. Scaling tenant isolation, white-label and support tier.
| Tier | Tenants | Catalog | Support | White-label | Monthly | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stacks | 1 | 19 curated stacks | Standard | — | $19/mo | DetailDeploy |
| Starter | 10 | Full catalog | Standard | +$15–25/mo | $49/mo | DetailDeploy |
| Pro | 25 | Full catalog | Priority bugfix | +$15–25/mo | $149/mo | DetailDeploy |
| Growth | 100 | Full catalog | Priority bugfix | +$15–25/mo | $349/mo | DetailDeploy |
| Scale | 500 | Full catalog | 7-day window | +$15–25/mo | $799/mo | DetailDeploy |
| Enterprise | Unlimited | Full catalog | Priority 7-day | Bundled | $1,499/mo | DetailDeploy |