pikepdf/pikepdf

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

2798 stars · 229 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

pikepdf is a Python library for reading, writing, repairing, and transforming PDF files, built on the mature qpdf C++ library. It supports page manipulation, metadata editing, lossless image extraction, and encryption/decryption with AES or RC4.

Use cases

• merge multiple pdf files into one
• split a pdf into separate pages
• repair a corrupted pdf file
• remove pages from a pdf
• rotate pages in a pdf
• extract images from a pdf without re-encoding
• add password encryption to a pdf
• edit pdf metadata like title and author

When to choose

• you need low-level, reliable PDF manipulation in Python
• you must repair damaged or malformed PDFs
• you need lossless image extraction from PDFs
• you want to encrypt or decrypt PDFs with modern ciphers
• you are replacing PyPDF2 with a more robust library

When to avoid

• you only need to render PDFs to images or text
• you want to create PDFs from scratch with rich layout control
• you need a pure-Python solution without native dependencies
• you need to fill or flatten PDF forms extensively

Facets

library · maturity active

pdf parser image-processing cryptography serialization pdf files developer-tools python windows cross-platform pdf-manipulation qpdf pdf-repair pdf-encryption pdf-metadata page-manipulation image-extraction automation linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="pikepdf/pikepdf")