Licensing · Editor + SDK

License terms

PDFluent is two products with two licence models. The desktop Editor is free for personal use and licensed per user per year for business. The developer SDK is licensed perpetually — pay once, own that version forever. Full legal text in the terms.

Editor — desktop app

Free for personal, non-commercial use

Business use needs an annual licence: €49 per user per year, delivered as an Ed25519-signed licence file, validated fully offline. One file covers all your seats.

SDK — developer library

Perpetual — pay once, own that version forever

Tiers from €699. First year of updates and support included; 30-day evaluation built into every channel; 30-day money-back guarantee.

SDK licence tiers

The sections below cover the developer SDK. All tiers include the full SDK — no feature restrictions. Tiers differ on the number of developers, locations, and products covered.

Trial

Free

Evaluation — 30 days

  • Full SDK — all modules unlocked
  • No watermarks on output
  • Unlimited documents during trial
  • 1 developer
  • Not for live production traffic
Start free trial

Lite

€699

1 developer · 1 location · 1 product

  • Full SDK — all features, all targets
  • Rust + C API, WASM, Python, Node.js, Java
  • AcroForms, XFA, PDF/A, signatures
  • Perpetual licence
  • First year of updates included
  • Email support (best effort)
  • 30-day money-back guarantee
Start free trial
Most Popular

Plus

€1,099

3 developers · 3 locations · 3 products

  • Full SDK — all features, all targets
  • Rust + C API, WASM, Python, Node.js, Java
  • AcroForms, XFA, PDF/A, signatures
  • Perpetual licence
  • First year of updates included
  • Email support (48h response)
  • 30-day money-back guarantee
Start free trial

Professional

€2,199

10 developers · 10 locations · 10 products

  • Full SDK — all features, all targets
  • Rust + C API, WASM, Python, Node.js, Java
  • AcroForms, XFA, PDF/A, signatures
  • Perpetual licence
  • First year of updates included
  • Email support (24h response)
  • 30-day money-back guarantee
Start free trial

Unlimited

€4,399

Unlimited developers · locations · products

  • Full SDK — all features, all targets
  • Rust + C API, WASM, Python, Node.js, Java
  • AcroForms, XFA, PDF/A, signatures
  • Perpetual licence
  • First year of updates included
  • Email support (24h response)
  • Priority bugfix queue
  • 30-day money-back guarantee
Start free trial

SDK maintenance — year 2+

The first year of updates and email support is included with every purchase. From year 2, you can subscribe to the maintenance plan to keep receiving updates. If you stop renewing, your existing deployment keeps working on the version you paid for — forever.

Tier1 yr3 yr (−10%)5 yr (−20%)
Lite / Plus€399/yr€1,077€1,596
Professional€699/yr€1,887€2,796
Unlimited€1,299/yr€3,507€5,196

All prices in EUR, excl. VAT.

SDK add-ons

Add-ons extend the usage rights of any base licence. They are activated immediately — your purchase confirmation email and order ID serve as the authorisation document. No separate licence file is issued.

OEM Redistribution

+€1,999

Right to bundle and distribute the PDFluent SDK as part of a compiled commercial software product you sell to end users. End users of your product do not need their own PDFluent licence.

Includes

  • Redistribution inside your compiled binary or package
  • End-user deployments without separate PDFluent licence
  • All tiers (Lite through Unlimited)

Does not cover

  • Building a competing PDF SDK or document-processing platform
  • Redistributing the SDK as a standalone developer product

Active immediately. Your purchase confirmation email and order ID constitute the OEM Redistribution License. No separate licence file is required.

Air-gapped Deployment

+€1,499

Right to deploy PDFluent in environments with no outbound internet connectivity. Licence validation is fully offline — no network request at runtime.

Includes

  • On-premise and isolated cloud deployments
  • Government, defence, and regulated environments
  • Environments where outbound connections are prohibited

Active immediately. Your purchase confirmation email and order ID confirm this right. No separate licence file is required.

Editor licence

The desktop editor uses a different, simpler model than the SDK.

Personal useFree, forever. The full app with no feature gates, for personal, non-commercial use. No account, no trial clock.
Business use€49 per user per year, billed annually as a subscription. One licence covers one named user on their machines.
Licence fileAn Ed25519-signed JSON file (pdfluent-license.json), emailed after purchase. The app validates it fully offline — no activation server, no phone-home.
TeamsOne file carries your whole seat count. Roll it out centrally via MDM — see the enterprise deployment guide.
RenewalRenews yearly; a fresh licence file is emailed automatically on every renewal and whenever your seat count changes. Manage seats, payment method, invoices or cancel at pdfluent.com/billing.

Open-source foundation crates

PDFluent is built on a foundation of low-level crates that are forks of upstream open-source libraries (lopdf, hayro, cff-parser). These crates remain under their original permissive licenses and may be used standalone without a commercial key. They are listed below for transparency. The PDFluent commercial value (engine, forms, signing, redaction, compliance, render, font, XFA) is in the proprietary crates published under the PDFluent Commercial License.

CrateLicenceNotes
pdfluent-lopdfMITLow-level PDF object model — fork of lopdf
pdfluent-cffMIT OR Apache-2.0CFF font parser — fork of cff-parser
pdfluent-ccittMIT OR Apache-2.0CCITT (G3/G4 fax) decoder — fork of hayro-ccitt
pdfluent-jbig2MIT OR Apache-2.0JBIG2 image decoder — fork of hayro-jbig2
pdfluent-jpeg2000MIT OR Apache-2.0JPEG 2000 image decoder — fork of hayro-jpeg2000
pdf-syntaxMIT OR Apache-2.0PDF syntax parser — fork of hayro-syntax
pdf-interpretMIT OR Apache-2.0PDF content stream interpreter — fork of hayro-interpret

These are the only crates published by PDFluent under permissive licenses. All other published crates ship under the PDFluent Commercial License — see /terms for the full terms.

Questions about licensing?

Custom licence terms, multi-year agreements, and enterprise procurement are all available. Reach out directly.