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Self-Hosting Stirling PDF: Complete PDF Toolkit

Stirling PDF is a self-hosted PDF toolkit. Merge, split, compress, convert, OCR, and sign PDFs — all locally, no cloud uploads.

stirling-pdfpdftoolsdocuments

What Is Stirling PDF?


Stirling PDF is a self-hosted web application for PDF manipulation. Every operation runs locally — your documents never leave your server.


Features


Basic Operations

  • Merge multiple PDFs
  • Split PDF into pages
  • Rotate pages
  • Remove pages
  • Reorder pages

    • Conversion

  • PDF to Word, Excel, PowerPoint
  • Image to PDF
  • HTML to PDF
  • PDF to images
  • Markdown to PDF

    • Optimization

  • Compress PDFs
  • Resize pages
  • Auto-crop
  • Remove blank pages

    • Security

  • Add password protection
  • Remove password
  • Add watermarks
  • Digital signatures
  • Redact text

    • Advanced

  • OCR (text recognition)
  • Add page numbers
  • Add headers/footers
  • Form filling
  • Compare two PDFs

    • Why Self-Host?


    Online PDF tools (ILovePDF, SmallPDF) upload your documents to their servers. For sensitive documents (contracts, financials, medical), that's a privacy risk. Stirling PDF processes everything locally.


    Deployment


    Deploy on TinyPod. Resources: 1 CPU, 512 MB RAM. Java-based.


    Stirling PDF replaces a dozen online PDF tools with one self-hosted app. Essential for anyone handling sensitive documents.