# apache/pdfbox

Mirror of Apache PDFBox

Repository: https://github.com/apache/pdfbox
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/pdfbox
Homepage: http://pdfbox.apache.org/
Language: Java
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: java, content, pdfbox, library
Last push: 2026-08-26T12:46:57+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 77/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 6185, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 3105, forks 959 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:43.744618+00:00)

## What it is
Apache PDFBox is an open source Java library for working with PDF documents, supporting creation, manipulation, and content extraction. It also ships command-line utilities for tasks like text extraction, splitting, merging, form filling, and PDF/A validation.

## Use cases
- extract text from pdf files in java
- merge multiple pdfs into one
- split a pdf into separate pages
- fill pdf forms programmatically
- validate pdfs against pdf/a standard
- render pdf pages to images
- create new pdf documents from scratch

## When to choose
- you need a mature, pure-Java PDF library with no native dependencies
- you want Apache-licensed PDF manipulation in a JVM application
- you need both a library API and ready-made command-line tools
- you need PDF/A-1b preflight validation

## When to avoid
- you need a non-JVM language like Python or Node (use PyPDF2 or pdf-lib instead)
- you need highly concurrent access to a single document (PDFBox documents are not thread-safe)
- you need advanced OCR of scanned PDFs (PDFBox extracts text but does not do OCR itself)
- you need heavy PDF editing with a GUI

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: pdf, parser, ocr, cli, developer-tools
- domain: pdf, files, developer-tools, cross-platform
- platform: jvm, cli, cross-platform
- tags: pdf-manipulation, text-extraction, pdf-forms, pdf-rendering, pdfa-validation, apache-software-foundation

## Member repositories
- apache/pdfbox (main) score 77

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:43.744618+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:46:10.414381+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/apache/pdfbox (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:43.744618+00:00, sha 3bf91d4c0833)
  - homepage: http://pdfbox.apache.org/ (fetched 2026-08-29T09:42:04.876027+00:00, sha c243a6f9a80f)
  - site_page: https://pdfbox.apache.org/2.0/getting-started.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:42:04.903442+00:00, sha 62b95d3add00)
  - site_page: https://pdfbox.apache.org/3.0/getting-started.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:42:04.885385+00:00, sha ea3700deaac4)
  - site_page: https://pdfbox.apache.org/2.0/faq.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:42:04.905264+00:00, sha 3fcd8dc11247)
  - site_page: https://www.apache.org/foundation (fetched 2026-08-29T09:42:04.907536+00:00, sha 85ddab865c2b)
  - site_page: https://pdfbox.apache.org/3.0/faq.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:42:04.901016+00:00, sha 77622f7c4a41)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.