Apache PDFBox

pdfbox.apache.org · checked 5 Oct 2026

#17 · PDF SDKs

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How it plugs in

—Public API

NoOpen source

YesFree tier

Signal on PDF SDKs6.0#17 of 31

Apache PDFBox is an open-source Java tool for creating and manipulating PDF documents and extracting content from them.

Pricing

Apache PDFBoxOpen-source Java library · Apache License 2.0Free

As pdfbox.apache.org lists them, checked 5 Oct 2026.

Near it

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Runs on

Web
Windows
Mac
Linux
iOS
Android

Facts

Website: pdfbox.apache.org
Price: Free tier
Free trial: Not stated
Command-line tools: The project provides Java command-line utilities, including tools for encryption and decryption, image and text export, merging, splitting, rendering, printing, and PDF inspection.
Dependencies: PDFBox uses Commons Logging, with Java Util Logging available as a fallback, and its fontbox and xmpbox components provide font handling and XMP metadata support.
Encryption: PDFBox uses the Java Cryptography Architecture and Bouncy Castle libraries for handling PDF encryption.
Founded: 2002
Integration: PDFBox can be added to an application as a Maven dependency using groupId org.apache.pdfbox and artifactId pdfbox.
Java requirement: The current PDFBox 3.0 release requires Java 8; the 2.0 release requires Java 6.
Maker: Apache PDFBox is an Apache Software Foundation project; the foundation describes itself as a U.S. 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
PDF/A validation: Its Preflight feature validates PDF files against the PDF/A-1b standard.
PDF operations: PDFBox can split or merge PDFs, fill forms, print PDFs, convert pages to images, create PDFs, and digitally sign PDFs.
Release verification: The download page provides PGP signatures and SHA512 checksums and says downloaded files should be verified for integrity.
Security scope: The security policy treats untrusted-PDF processing issues as vulnerabilities when they cause remote code execution, security-boundary escape, or unauthorized data access.
Support: Users can ask usage questions on the community mailing list, while confirmed bugs and enhancement requests can be reported through the JIRA issue tracker.

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