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PDFluent
For developers →Download
macOS 11+ · Windows 10+

Your PDFs.
Private by default.

A native desktop editor. Everything runs locally. Free for everyone — including at work.

Also available as an SDK
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Sample document · Q4 2025 Investor Letter

Meridian Partners LP

FISCAL YEAR 2025 · PAGE 3 OF 12
Performance Overview

Net asset value increased 18.4% in the fourth quarter, bringing full-year returns to 31.2% versus the benchmark's 14.7%.

Strong performance in technology and infrastructure positions drove the outperformance. The fund maintained its defensive tilt throughout the period.

Portfolio Highlights

Holdings in renewable infrastructure contributed 7.4% to absolute returns. The fund maintained its 22% allocation to European mid-caps throughout Q4.

Scroll to explore
Part 1 of 2 · Desktop editor

The editor

A native, local-first PDF editor for Mac and Windows. Free for everyone, including commercial use.

FeaturesSecurity & privacyPricingDownload
Features

One desktop app.
Everything you actually do with a PDF.

01 — Read

Instant. Even your heaviest files.

Full-text search. ⌘K command palette. Page thumbnails. All local.

02 — Edit

Change text directly in your PDF.

Edit fonts, sizes, colors. Add shapes. No round-trip to a cloud.

03 — Redact

GDPR-proof redaction. Actually deleted.

Permanently erase SSNs, IBANs, names. Strip hidden metadata in one click.

04 — Sign

PAdES digital signatures. Cryptographically tamper-evident.

PAdES (PDF Advanced Electronic Signatures) is the ETSI/EU standard. Certificate-based, not just an image — it seals the document permanently.

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PDF Forms

Fill standard PDF forms.

AcroForm PDFs — government forms, bank documents, contracts — fully supported. Every field type, locally, no account needed.

experimentalXFA (XML Forms Architecture) forms also supported — experimental, improving with every release.

A PDF editor built with Rust

The PDF engine is written in Rust. The interpreter and heavy decoders are #![forbid(unsafe_code)]. The parser is safe Rust with one audited self-referential cache. Safe Rust rules out buffer overflows and use-after-free.

~70%
of serious security bugs in Chromium are memory-safety flaws
Chromium project memory-safety page [C21, 2026-10-15]

No C. No C++. No third-party PDF engine. Pure Rust, from scratch.

0bytes

uploaded. Ever. To anyone.

No cloud
Everything stays on your machine.
No account
Download and use. Nothing to sign up for.
No telemetry
We literally cannot see your data.
Runs on your device. 0 bytes uploaded.
Pricing

Free for everyone.
Including business use.

What PDFluent costs — Editor
€0for everyone
Including commercial use — no seats, no subscription
Account requiredNo
File storage100% local
PlatformsmacOS · Windows
AcroForm supportFull
Download size~45 MB (macOS)
Adobe Acrobat Pro — for comparison
€24.19/mo
Individual plan, billed annually, paid monthly, Dutch store, VAT included [C19, 2026-10-13].
Account requiredYes
File storageCloud sync
PlatformsmacOS · Windows
AcroForm supportFull
Download PDFluent — it's freeFree forever, including commercial use. No credit card needed.

Download.
Free.
No account.

macOS 11+ · Windows 10+

Free for everyone — including at work.

Part 2 of 2 · Developer SDKs

The SDKs

The same Rust engine, as two libraries: one to change PDFs, one to read them into an AI pipeline.

ManipulateExtractBenchmarks
For developers

The same engine, as two SDKs.

Pure Rust, memory-safe. One package to change PDFs, one to read them into your pipeline.

SDK · Manipulatepdfluent

Manipulate PDFs

Merge & split
pages, ranges, bookmarks
Digital signatures
PAdES
Redaction
content removed, not covered
PDF/A
1b · 2b · 3b
Forms
AcroForm fill · XFA flatten
Compression
images, streams, fonts
SDK overview
SDK · ExtractNew in 1.1.0Preview

Extract text for AI

Text + bounding boxes
per word, in reading order
OCR
scanned pages
Markdown output
headings, lists, tables — preview
JSON output
Docling-compatible
Office formats
DOCX · PPTX · XLSX · HTML
PyMuPDF API compat
Follows part of the PyMuPDF API; partial coverage.
See SDK pricing Free under the AGPLv3, or a commercial licence if you'd rather not publish your own source.
Public package availability

Six packages, five registries. Install today.

PDFluent ships the SDK to six language bindings across five public registries (Node.js and WASM both publish to npm). Nothing private. Nothing gated.

SDK · Benchmarks

PDF structure: measured results

We treat Docling as the floor, not the target. Where we're still behind, we say so — and update these numbers every release.

Structure vs Docling

FinTabNet tables, TEDS+0.150vs Docling · A38 · 2026-10-14Higher on tuning split
PubTables-1M tables, TEDS+0.087vs Docling · A39 · 2026-10-14Higher on tuning split
ParseBench, record match+0.027vs Docling · A40 · 2026-10-14Within noise

Footprint & speed vs six parsers

Peak memory17 MBvs 46–4,454 MB · C15 · 2026-09-26Lower memory
Install size8 MBvs 48–2,308 MB · C15 · 2026-09-26Smaller install
Speed, single-thread11.6 ms/page~200x Docling · C16 · 2026-09-27Faster per-page

Table rows come from each dataset's development (tuning) split, so our side is an upper bound, and structured extraction ships as Preview.

Full methodology and results
FAQ

Questions, answered.

Is PDFluent really free, including for commercial use?
Yes. The desktop editor is free for everyone, including commercial use at work — no seats, no subscription, no account. Only the separately-licensed developer SDK is a paid product.
Does PDFluent upload my files to the cloud?
No. Everything runs on your machine. There is no account, no cloud storage, and no telemetry — the files you open never leave your device.
Which platforms does PDFluent run on?
macOS 11 (Big Sur) and later, on both Intel and Apple Silicon, and Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit).
Is PDFluent secure?
PDFluent is written in Rust, and safe Rust rules out that class of memory-safety bug. The Chromium project reports that around 70% of serious security bugs in Chromium are memory-safety problems [C21, 2026-10-15].
Can PDFluent open XFA forms?
Yes. It renders and fills legacy XFA (XML Forms Architecture) forms that many readers refuse — this support is experimental and improving with each release. Standard AcroForm PDFs are fully supported.
Is there a developer SDK?
Yes. The same Rust engine ships as a PDF SDK (software development kit) with bindings for Rust, Python, Node.js, .NET, Java, and WebAssembly. It is licensed separately from the editor: free and complete under the AGPL, or €999 a year per organisation if you would rather not publish your own source.
Does the Python package follow the PyMuPDF API?
The Python package includes a compat layer that follows part of the PyMuPDF API. Coverage is partial and behaviour can differ in places, and it is an independent implementation, not PyMuPDF. Structured extraction ships as Preview in SDK 1.1.0, so its API may change in a minor release.
Can I extract text and tables from a PDF for a RAG or LLM pipeline?
Yes — plain text and bounding boxes are stable today across every binding. Markdown/JSON table and heading extraction ships as a preview in SDK 1.1.0; see the extraction guide and the benchmark against Docling for the current, honest state.