Paperless-ngx
Document Management
Scan, index, and archive all of your paper documents with an improved interface (fork of Paperless).
Actively maintained
Real momentum
GPL-3.0
Local hosted web application that allows you to perform various operations on PDF files, such as merging, splitting, file conversions and OCR.
Stirling-PDF is an open-source document management project, with 90k GitHub stars and a health score of 100/100. It committed 1627 times in the last twelve months across 12 of those months, and its status is actively maintained. Licence: Apache-2.0. It has real momentum, so treat it as a live competitor rather than a stale repository.
| Status | Actively maintained — Committed within the last 45 days. |
|---|---|
| Last commit | 2026-08-14 |
| Days since last commit | 3 |
| Commits, last 3 months | 631 |
| Commits, last 12 months | 1627 |
| Months with activity | 12 of 12 |
| Last release | 2026-08-06 |
| Archived | No |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 |
| Category | Document Management |
Health score combines commit recency, twelve-month commit volume, months with activity, release recency and archive state. Metadata refreshed August 2026.
Permissive (MIT, Apache, BSD): you can fork it, close the source and sell it. Lowest legal friction for a commercial product.
This matters most when you plan to sell a hosted version. A permissive licence means anyone — including a competitor with more capital — can do the same, so your defensibility has to come from distribution, support or data, not from the code.
Stirling-PDF is shipping code consistently, so a buyer comparing your product will find a maintained free option. Price and position against the total cost of self-hosting it, not against the paid incumbent's list price.
Assume every prospect can find a free version in five minutes. Your wedge has to be something open source structurally cannot deliver: compliance, support SLAs, managed hosting at scale, or a workflow the maintainers refuse to build.
Actively maintained. Stirling-PDF recorded 1627 commits over the last twelve months, with activity in 12 of those months and 631 commits in the last quarter. Last commit: 2026-08-14. Last release: 2026-08-06. Committed within the last 45 days.
Stirling-PDF is published under Apache-2.0. Permissive (MIT, Apache, BSD): you can fork it, close the source and sell it. Lowest legal friction for a commercial product.
41 open-source implementations, 22 of them actively maintained, led by Stirling-PDF at 90k stars. Saturation score 72/100 — Crowded. Free, maintained alternatives already dominate this category.
Document Management
Scan, index, and archive all of your paper documents with an improved interface (fork of Paperless).
Document Management
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Alternative to DocuSign, Document signing
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