Best Open Source Alternatives to Adobe Acrobat

Compare the best free and open-source alternatives to Adobe Acrobat — self-hosted and desktop replacements you fully control, ranked by GitHub stars, license and platform support.

Curated by open-source.store · Updated August 2026 · 7 alternatives

Adobe Acrobat

Proprietary SaaS

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Platformsweb, desktop, mobile, windows, macos, android, ios

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Adobe Acrobat alternatives compared

Open-source alternatives to Adobe Acrobat, compared by stars, license and platform
Tool		License	Platforms	Self-hosted
Stirling-PDF	88,521	LGPL-3.0	LinuxmacOSWindowsDocker	Yes	Aug 2026	Visit
PDF.js	53,653	Apache-2.0	WebLinuxmacOSWindows	No	Jul 2026	Visit
pdfcpu	8,743	Apache-2.0	LinuxmacOSWindows	No	Jul 2026	Visit
PDF Arranger	5,746	GPL-3.0	LinuxWindows	No	Aug 2026	Visit
PDFsam Basic	4,525	AGPL-3.0	LinuxmacOSWindows	No	Jul 2026	Visit
Okular	1,447	GPL-2.0	LinuxmacOSWindowsandroid	No	Aug 2026	Visit
PDF Tricks	125	GPL-3.0	Linux	No	Jul 2026	Visit

Top open-source Adobe Acrobat alternatives

Stirling-PDF88,521LGPL-3.0

A robust, self-hosted web application that allows you to perform various operations on PDFs.

LinuxmacOSWindowsDockerWeb

vs Adobe Acrobat: a free, open-source option you fully control, licensed LGPL-3.0.

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PDF.js53,653Apache-2.0

A general-purpose, web standards-based platform for parsing and rendering PDFs by Mozilla.

WebLinuxmacOSWindows

vs Adobe Acrobat: a free, open-source option you fully control, licensed Apache-2.0.

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pdfcpu8,743Apache-2.0

A PDF processing library and CLI tool written in Go.

LinuxmacOSWindows

vs Adobe Acrobat: a free, open-source option you fully control, licensed Apache-2.0.

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PDF Arranger5,746GPL-3.0

A small GTK application which helps the user merge, split, rotate, and crop PDF documents.

LinuxWindows

vs Adobe Acrobat: a free, open-source option you fully control, licensed GPL-3.0.

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PDFsam Basic4,525AGPL-3.0

A free desktop tool to split, merge, mix, and rotate PDF files.

LinuxmacOSWindows

vs Adobe Acrobat: a free, open-source option you fully control, licensed AGPL-3.0.

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Best Open Source Alternatives to Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat alternatives compared

Top open-source Adobe Acrobat alternatives

More alternatives to Adobe Acrobat

Okular

PDF Tricks