# pdfcpu/pdfcpu

PDF tooling for Go and the command line.

Repository: https://github.com/pdfcpu/pdfcpu
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/pdfcpu
Homepage: http://pdfcpu.io/
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: go, golang, golang-library, pdf, pdf-files, cli, pdf-tools
Last push: 2026-08-24T10:03:29+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 94/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 85, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3363, "days_push": 9, "days_rel": 22, "gap_med": 45.0, "n_releases_24m": 9}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 8801, forks 625 (observed 2026-08-28T04:10:25.817707+00:00)

## What it is
pdfcpu is a PDF processing library and command-line tool written in Go, supporting validation, optimization, encryption, signing, merging, splitting, watermarking, and content extraction. It handles real-world malformed PDFs and supports PDF 1.7 with evolving PDF 2.0 support, usable both from scripts and embedded in Go applications.

## Use cases
- merge multiple pdf files into one
- validate pdf files for corruption
- add watermarks to pdfs
- split a pdf into separate pages
- extract images and fonts from a pdf
- encrypt and decrypt pdf documents
- batch process pdfs from the command line
- manipulate pdfs in a go application

## When to choose
- you need PDF processing in Go without heavyweight runtime dependencies
- you want a CLI for scripting PDF pipelines including encrypted files
- you need to handle real-world malformed PDFs that violate the spec
- you need validation, optimization, watermarking, or signature inspection

## When to avoid
- you need full PDF 2.0 feature support, which is still evolving
- you need to create complex PDFs from scratch with rich layout engines
- you need OCR or text recognition, which pdfcpu does not provide

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: pdf, parser, cli, cryptography, image-processing, developer-tools
- domain: pdf, files, developer-tools
- platform: go, cli, cross-platform
- tags: pdf-processing, pdf-manipulation, pdf-validation, watermarking, pdf-merge, go-library, server-side, command-line, automation

## Member repositories
- pdfcpu/pdfcpu (main) score 94

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:25.817707+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 2026-08-29T17:25:11.326460+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/pdfcpu/pdfcpu (fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:25.817707+00:00, sha d79adf536fe8)
  - homepage: http://pdfcpu.io/ (fetched 2026-08-29T08:25:20.866916+00:00, sha 057f7723d45b)
  - site_page: https://pdfcpu.io/about/about (fetched 2026-08-29T08:25:20.869542+00:00, sha 8c930c7160d9)
  - site_page: https://pdfcpu.io/changelog (fetched 2026-08-29T08:25:20.871257+00:00, sha bc5bef0f4ac5)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.