Does Stirling PDF send my documents to the cloud?

No. Stirling PDF runs entirely on your VPS. Documents are processed in memory on your server and are never transmitted to any external service. After processing, temporary files are deleted automatically. This makes it suitable for confidential documents such as contracts, financial reports and medical records.

Does OCR work out of the box?

The default image (`stirlingtools/stirling-pdf:latest`) bundles Tesseract with the English, French, Arabic and other common language packs. You can add more language packs by mounting additional tessdata files into the container's `/usr/share/tessdata` volume.

How much RAM does Stirling PDF need?

The container idles under 512 MB RAM. For light to moderate use (merging, splitting, compressing PDFs), 1 GB is comfortable. For heavy OCR workloads on large scanned documents, a 2 GB VPS is recommended to avoid Java heap pressure.

Is Stirling PDF free?

Yes. The Community Edition (MIT licence) is completely free with no feature limits. A proprietary 'Ultra' edition exists with enterprise SSO and audit logs, but all standard PDF operations are in the free version. On ServOrbit, you pay only for the VPS — Stirling PDF itself costs nothing.

Share information and collaborate.

Stirling PDF

Every PDF operation you'll ever need — private, self-hosted, on your VPS.

512 MB (2 GB recommended for OCR-heavy workloads) RAM 1 vCPU Port 8080 Available

Source code

Tech stack

DockerJavaSpring BootTesseract OCR

Minimum RAM512 MB (2 GB recommended for OCR-heavy workloads)

Minimum CPU1 vCPU

Default port8080

Compatible OSChoice of Linux distributions

Stirling PDF is the most-starred PDF application on GitHub (87 k+ stars, MIT licence, v2.14.2). It runs as a single lightweight Docker container and exposes a clean web UI where you — or your team — can perform 50+ PDF operations without installing anything on your computer: merge, split, rotate, compress, convert to/from Word and images, add watermarks, page numbers and signatures, redact sensitive content, and run OCR via Tesseract across dozens of languages.

Because it runs entirely on your VPS, no PDF ever leaves your network. There is no subscription, no usage cap, and no vendor lock-in. The Spring Boot Java container uses under 512 MB RAM at idle and handles multi-MB PDFs in seconds on a 1 vCPU VPS. Deploy it in one click from the ServOrbit marketplace and access it instantly from any browser.

Key features

50+ PDF operations: merge, split, rotate, compress, convert (Word, images, HTML), watermark, redact, sign

Tesseract OCR: turn scanned PDFs into searchable text in 100+ languages — including Arabic, French and English

PDF to Word / Word to PDF, PDF to images (JPG/PNG/TIFF), images to PDF — all in the browser

Password-protect or unlock PDFs, edit metadata, flatten annotations, compare two PDFs side-by-side

Add page numbers, headers, footers, bookmarks and Bates numbering in bulk

Single Docker container, < 512 MB RAM at idle — minimal VPS footprint

Open-source MIT licence — self-auditable, no telemetry, no phone-home after install

When to use this solution?

1

Document-heavy workflows

Law firms, accountants and consultants handle hundreds of PDFs a day. Stirling PDF gives your team a shared internal tool to merge contracts, compress reports before emailing, redact sensitive data and add watermarks — all without uploading documents to third-party SaaS.

2

Digitising paper documents

Upload scanned PDFs or JPEG photos of handwritten forms and run Tesseract OCR to produce searchable, copy-pasteable text. Supports Arabic, French and English out of the box — critical for Moroccan administrative documents.

3

Developer tooling

Automate PDF generation in your CI pipeline: call Stirling PDF's REST API to convert HTML invoices to PDF, merge multi-part documents, or compress build artefacts — without a third-party dependency or an API key.

Deploy Stirling PDF on your VPS

Guide optimized for ServOrbit Cloud VPS.

01

Order a ServOrbit VPS

Any Ubuntu 24.04 plan with 1 GB RAM or more works. Stirling PDF idles under 512 MB; a 2 GB plan handles heavy OCR jobs comfortably. No domain is required — access via IP:8080 is supported.

02

One-click install from the marketplace

Open your ServOrbit control panel, go to Marketplace → Collaboration & Productivité → Stirling PDF, and click Deploy. Docker pulls the image and the container starts automatically — no configuration needed.

03

Open the web UI

Navigate to http://:8080 in your browser. The Stirling PDF home screen appears immediately — no login required in the default configuration.

04

Use any PDF tool

Choose an operation from the sidebar: Merge PDFs, Compress, Convert to Word, OCR, Add Watermark, etc. Upload your file(s), click the action button, and download the result in seconds.

05

Enable login (optional, recommended for teams)

To restrict access to authorised users, SSH into your VPS and edit the Docker environment variable SECURITY_ENABLELOGIN=true in your compose file, then restart the container. Stirling PDF creates an admin account on first boot — credentials are shown in the container logs.

Frequently asked questions

Stirling PDF is an open-source PDF manipulation suite (MIT licence) built with Java and Spring Boot. It runs as a single Docker container and exposes a web interface for 50+ PDF operations — merge, split, compress, convert, OCR, watermark, redact, sign and more. It is the #1 PDF application on GitHub by star count (87 k+ stars).