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
Great project. I like the 1-star reviews complaining about the lack of advertising and tracking.
haha thanks
Lol wait seriously? Surely those are a joke.
Thank you so much. Why did you start this project, which certainly involves a lot of work? ( aka why are you so cool?)
Thank you! It started off as a simple tool as I wanted to merge PDFs visually by applying page ranges and I couldn’t find any offline tool for that. I happened to then post it on reddit, and people asked me to open source it. After which I kept adding features on request and here we are 😂
You’re great for making this so everyone can use it. Thank you
(:
I’ve used it before for a job application! I needed to send them sensitive data. Tysm!
Great intuitive UI, does what it says, and it’s fast. 5/5
Thanks!
Been using this for a while now, wife and kids are also very pleased with it. Easy to use and great layout, thank you so much!
wow, that’s great to know
Does each user have their own account? Or can anyone and everyone see all the pdfs? Or are the pdfs only stored for the duration of the browser session?
There are no accounts or signup. All the processing happens locally in your browser. In fact, you can even use it offline once the page is loaded, and only you have access to the PDFs
Everything local, I assume, means no upload? My dad does house inspections and so there’s like 4 or 5 pdf forms he fills out all the time. If he were using this, would he upload the template every time, or could he upload it once and then fill it out multiple times?
I assume also that it wouldn’t keep a history of each finished file, and it’s all ephemeral?
It never keeps any history, the TTL for the document is only as long as you are not done with the processing. There is no template system now. However I am planning to include a JSON based templating system which you can upload once and save and can be reused to auto fill forms
I’ve used Stirling pdf in the past. How does it compare?
Not sure, as I haven’t used Stirling and at the same time I didn’t make it to compete with other tools. Hence I never mention its better than xyz tool either on our github or website. Users would have to do their own due diligence in this case. However it does have the best bookmark tool in the market(yes, better than adobe acrobat) and also a form creator tool, among others, which you can’t find in other OS tools.
I understand and I wasn’t looking for a "better or worst"assessment. I’ll give it a try even if I haven’t needed to manipulate pdfs. Always nice to add to the toolset.
Thank you!
No man, thank you!
Honestly, I think this is just one where you try it for yourself. The compose file is about 4 lines long, I had the whole thing up and running in about 30 seconds (OK, 45; I forgot a port was already in use and had to redeploy).
So far my one big complaint would be that the self-hosted version replicates the entire website, including all of the “Why choose Bento PDF” and “Try now” and so on. It’d be nice to just have the tools right there when I load it up. Other than that, well, it looks cool, I’ll know more once I actually try out the available options.
Just try the simple image, see https://github.com/alam00000/bentopdf?tab=readme-ov-file#-simple-mode-for-internal-use :)
Oh, perfect. Thank you.
As someone who have been using both, you don’t need an account to use bentopdf. All the data is processed locally, making it excellent for a single user scenario. I drink Sterling has a very handy omni-tool, but I dare say it’s a matter of preference.
I go with bento where I can, and use sterling as a fallback.
No account need for Stirling either. I will try to give it a go soon.
I was not very clear, sorry about that: sterling supports accounts and oicd logins.
Are there ways to use it via an API? In particular I’d love to be able to programmatically submit a Word or Excel document and receive a PDF back
As its fully client side, it doesn’t expose any APIS. HOwever, I am writing an API only version of bentopdf on Rust
Agreed. I spent a bit of time writing out a script for similar functionality for one of our business units, but I never was able to figure out how to convert excel sheets to a PDF to be able to merge them in the allotted time, so it just doesn’t support them lol.
But I can see why it wouldn’t have an API, since the whole deal is it stays in your browser, and an API would mean sending the files to the server.
Maybe there’s some way to use selenium or something like that so that it stays local.
Unsure it fits your scenario but you could use VBA. In my case, we collect data via Excel then they get populated into a Word report template, and finally export to PDF for project delivery purposes, all automated using VBA.
I had no clue this existed!!! Thanks for sharing.
Would you say that BentoPDF is an alternative to Adobe Acrobat and/or Bluebeam Revu?
I use those for my job, but it’d be nice to have a FLOSS alternative as a backup
It has almost all the features of Acrobat except for the text editing, which i will be adding soon
Awesome! Thanks for taking the time to answer.
I will definitely give this a try next weekend
From what I’ve seen in BlueBeam, I don’t think most PDF editors are going to include any tools to compete with it. Its in a different category for construction markups.
That’s ultimately what I’m looking for, but a Revu Lite is a good step in that direction
Looks great
Thank you!
Will try it, looks handy. Thanks!
Thanks! Let me know how it goes
It’s great. I added it to my self hosting stack, will be relying on it from now on. I can’t wait to need some pdf tweaking in the future!
People like you keep my world spinning. Kudos!
The logo: all i see us the head between open legs
It’s supposed to look like a B 🥀
Too bad, now you are cursed with this knowledge
Or a B-2.
How does this compare tp stirling pdf?
Nice, and thanks for posting here! We have a lot of discussion about projects, and it’s helpful when the creator/developer is around to respond to comments directly 😄
I saw the update on GitHub about the goal of working on it full time. I also swapped over from StirlingPDF and I’m excited to see where this project goes. Best of luck :)
Thank you! 😊
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?
Currently there’s no such feature
love it been hosting mine for close to a month now
wow you are an early user, thank you
How about email conversion functionality? I get lots of law offices in the USA looking to push an outlook data file in and receive an organized lot PDF back out. On the roadmap?
This is actually coming up in next release
Heck yeah, appreciate your efforts, you’re creating a product to compete with software suites that are incredibly expensive to buy per user per year, you’re doing the needful
