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Self-hosted GED — OCR, auto-tagging and full-text search for all your documents. AGPL-3.0, 43 k+ stars, Django + PostgreSQL + Redis.
Paperless-ngx is a community-maintained, open-source document management system (AGPL-3.0, 43 k+ stars) that transforms your physical and digital documents into a searchable, well-organised archive — entirely on your own VPS, with zero data leaving your infrastructure.
Upload a PDF or scan a paper document and Paperless-ngx automatically runs OCR via Tesseract (French, English, Arabic included), extracts the full text, matches the document against your rules (by sender email, keyword or regex), assigns a correspondent (e.g. "Tax Authority", "Bank"), a document type (e.g. "Invoice", "Contract") and a set of tags — all without any manual intervention. Every word in every document becomes instantly searchable.
The stack runs as three Docker containers: a Django/Gunicorn webserver, a PostgreSQL 16 database and a Redis broker for the Celery task queue. A consumption directory lets you automate ingestion: drop a file in the folder, share it via email or push it from a scanner, and the document is processed and filed automatically. The REST API opens the door to integrations with n8n, Nextcloud, your ERP or any custom workflow.
Replace paper filing cabinets and scattered PDFs with a centralised, searchable archive. Accountants drop invoices in the consumption folder; Paperless-ngx OCRs, tags and files them by supplier and month automatically. Auditors search for 'VAT refund 2025' and get the exact document in under a second — no more hunting through folders.
Store bank statements, tax returns, lease agreements and insurance policies in one searchable place. Auto-tagging rules route every bank PDF to the right correspondent. Full-text search finds any clause in any contract. Encrypted backups via rsync or S3-compatible tools keep the archive safe — and 100% off cloud services.
Use Paperless-ngx as an internal document store for compliance artifacts: signed NDAs, server purchase invoices, audit reports, SSL certificate renewals. The REST API lets your CI pipeline auto-upload generated PDFs (reports, changelogs) immediately after each build. Tags and correspondents make GDPR audit trails effortless.
Guide optimized for ServOrbit Cloud VPS.
Paperless-ngx runs comfortably on a 2 GB / 2 vCPU VPS (Ubuntu 24.04). The three containers — webserver, PostgreSQL and Redis — idle around 400–512 MB RAM. For large archives (100 k+ documents) or concurrent OCR jobs, a 4 GB plan gives comfortable headroom.
Open your ServOrbit control panel, navigate to Marketplace → Collaboration & Productivity → Paperless-ngx, and click Deploy. Docker pulls ghcr.io/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx:latest, PostgreSQL 16 and Redis 7, then starts all three containers. An admin account is created automatically from the credentials provisioned at deploy time.
Navigate to http:// and log in with the admin credentials from your welcome email. Go to Settings → Document Types and create your first type (e.g. "Invoice", "Contract"). Then go to Correspondents and add the senders you deal with most often. Paperless-ngx uses these to auto-file incoming documents.
The easiest way to feed documents is the consumption folder mounted at /usr/src/paperless/consume inside the container. On your VPS, files placed there are processed automatically. Alternatively, enable the email consumer (Settings → Mail) to pull attachments from a dedicated IMAP mailbox — perfect for forwarding scanned invoices or bank statements.
In Settings → Matching, create rules that automatically tag and file documents. Example: any document whose title contains 'Invoice' from 'your-supplier.com' → correspondent "Supplier", type "Invoice", tag "#accounting". Paperless-ngx tests each rule against every new document and applies all matches instantly.
For remote access, point your domain to the VPS and add a reverse proxy (Nginx or Caddy) forwarding HTTPS to localhost:8000. Update PAPERLESS_URL in your .env to https://docs.your-domain.com. All document download links and email notifications will use the correct URL. A subdomain like docs.your-domain.com is a clean convention.
Browse our help center and FAQ, or write to our team — support in French, English and Arabic.