How does this compare tp stirling pdf?
this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2025
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Hi folks!
I’m the creator of BentoPDF. It is an open source PDF toolkit that runs entirely in your browser. Your documents stay private, by design.
BentoPDF started as a small side project, but over time it has grown into something much bigger. With our latest major update, BentoPDF now includes 100+ tools, all running fully client-side.
You can do the basics like merge PDFs(while preserving bookmarks), split documents, extract or delete pages, reorder files, rotate pages, and compress PDFs. Thee are also some advanced tools.
You can edit and annotate PDFs directly in the browser: highlight text, add comments, draw shapes, insert images, fill(including XFA) and create forms, manage bookmarks, generate tables of contents, redact, add headers, footers, watermarks, and page numbers.
BentoPDF also supports an extensive range of file conversions. You can convert Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenOffice, Pages, CSV, RTF, EPUB, MOBI, comic book formats, and many more into PDFs, and also convert PDFs back into Word, Excel, images, Markdown, CSV, JSON, and plain text.
For images, BentoPDF supports a massive variety of formats, including HEIC, WebP, SVG, PSD, JP2, and and aalso other formats such as EPUB, CBR/CBZ. You can convert images to PDFs, extract images from PDFs in their original format, or rasterize PDFs with full DPI control.
There are also organization and optimization tools: OCR, PDF/A conversion, booklet creation, N-up layouts, page division, attachment management, layer (OCG) editing, metadata inspection and editing, repair tools, and advanced compression algorithms that rival commercial solutions.
The latest update also includes AI ready extraction tools to export PDFs to structured JSON, extract tables as CSV/Markdown/JSON, and prepare PDFs for RAG and LLM workflows.
All of this works entirely in the browser, without accounts, uploads, or tracking.
This is my first post here and I hope you like it. Any feedback or feature requests are appreciated. Thank you.
Github Link: https://github.com/alam00000/bentopdf
what is the reason to put that tool into a browser? if i use the thing on my private computer, it increases complexity compared to a local installation (not an issue for many ppl here, but for my grandma surely). if i use it on a corporate environment, wouldn't more employees use it if it was the default PDF viewer on their managed device?
what did i miss?
this is meant to be self hosted on a server.. in my case its a home server, so my wife and i can access/use this at home and on the road, having the documents synced in one place, which is also self-hosted
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8k Stars in 2 months. Wild...
PS: Your git is misconfigured and doesn't line up with your GH account...
Thanks! Yes, I always forget to fix it xD
a small question, if I may.
When I worked in technical support for a popular phone brand a lifetime ago, I had to make clickable “navigatable” pdfs. Create empty objects around apps and settings so that technicians could help clients without having access to their phone or device with current OS update. I would update mine and take screen shots then convert those with clickable objects to switch to the correct page to act as a sudo phone/tablet. Is this something that BentoPDF can do?
I have it on my laptop. Thank you for your efforts.
glad it helped!
This is amazing, well done.
thank you!
Is there a function to create a booklet or brochure?
This was a very useful feature to print a number of pages and have them in an easy format to read.
However, at least my Ubuntu print driver doesn't have this feature, and I would need an extra tool to achive this goal.
Yes there is a booklet feature along with NUP tool
I don't suppose you're able to sign PDFs with something like a CAC card right? Is that still wholly in the realm of acrobat?
Literally the only thing I need another software to do so I can finally uninstall the last Adobe product from my VM. I'm running Linux so getting this functionality in Linux would be ideal. But since no one else has done it, I assume Adobe has some kind of stranglehold on that process?
sorry but this is the first time I am hearing of a CAC card. Can you give me more details. I can check it out then
No problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Access_Card
Essentially it's a physical token containing a certificate. I can then put that card into a CAC card reader and authenticate with it and a PIN that I setup on my card.
I can then also sign PDF signature blocks with the cert on the card. I have only found this ability in Adobe Acrobat. The signature block in Adobe is different from just their regular sign location for digital ink. I've never made a PDF with one of those blocks, I've only just signed them so I'm not sure what exactly that kind of signing block is called.
So bottom line, it's a physical card with a certificate loaded on it. Adobe can read that cert and use it to sign signature blocks inside a PDF.
Thank you so much for your amazing work! I had to sign something a few weeks ago on a new PC and Bento is so easy
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This looks great!
Can you use it to overlay text fields and fill them?
Most of my uses are basic. Like filling out a PDF form that doesn't have proper form entry fields. These are usually older government or bureaucratic/healthcare/school forms.
I end up adding text boxes and entering values, or adding an X on top of a checkbox, adding a signature PNG file and scaling it to fit the size. Sometimes I have to add a highlight overlay. Then I save it all as a single flattened PDF file.
Amazingly, this is hard to do in Acrobat and a lot of apps. I end up using a janky, 10-yo desktop app that is no longer supported.
Thank you so much! This could be a great replacement to ilovepdf, that website has so much data and no one knows what they are dong with it.
You just made my life easier, Thank You.
This is a wild coincidence. I was just looking for something like this. Time to go tinker.
🙌🏻
I have been looking for something like this for ages. I could kiss you rn 😘
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