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

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[–] USSEthernet@startrek.website 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

So just got this up and running yesterday and today my wife used it for the first time. She did what she needed to do, but we may have come across a bug. I don't know. She had to take a 72 page PDF and break it out into multiple smaller PDFs. While she was doing that, multiple pages in the preview window would keep going blank/white. Not sure if you're aware of something like that, if not I can try to reproduce and grab logs and post them on github.

[–] alam@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

yes please that'd be helpful

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Thanks for this! I saw this post yesterday, and decided to check it out. I installed it locally on my laptop, and am evaluating it for work. If I recommend it for use, we'll get a license :).

Since the idea would be to replace Adobe for non-Pro (and maybe some Pro accounts), ease of use for low-tech users is at the front of my mind. Not being able to "set as default" for PDFs is not ideal, but I understand the limitation comes from running in the browser. Is there some way to open the PDF, and then choose which tool to use? Rather than how it seems now: choose the tool/function, then upload the PDF.

[–] alam@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

In next week we are going to be releasing Desktop apps, so you can download it and then set as default viewer

[–] USSEthernet@startrek.website 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Saw this as an option in TrueNAS earlier and will probably be standing this up when I get home today. I was curious about the difference between this and Stirling, but that appears to have been answered. Thank you for what you do and I'll definitely give it a try.

Update: got it up and running. Works great. Wife deals with PDFs a lot and she loves it. Thanks again!

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 179 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Can it also redact text from documents without allowing you to just copy and paste it back out again?

Asking for a friend.

[–] alam@lemmy.world 90 points 1 week ago

Yes! It performs true redaction. You can find it in the editor tool

[–] JGrffn@lemmy.world 61 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It is a civic duty to redact certain papers incorrectly.

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago

Certain files, involving a certain island.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

@Blackmist@feddit.uk works for the NCA. LOL

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[–] tburkhol@lemmy.world 71 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Great project. I like the 1-star reviews complaining about the lack of advertising and tracking.

[–] alam@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago

haha thanks

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[–] cRazi_man@europe.pub 63 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I use this already. Works great. Thanks for your hard work on this.

[–] alam@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago

Glad it helped!

[–] mrsilkworm@piefed.social 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You're doing the lords work my dude. There are not enough ways to thank you for your work

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[–] rotkehlchen@sh.itjust.works 31 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thank you so much. Why did you start this project, which certainly involves a lot of work? ( aka why are you so cool?)

[–] alam@lemmy.world 34 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

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 😂

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[–] Lowlands@lemmy.world 29 points 1 week ago (5 children)

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!

[–] alam@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

wow, that's great to know

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[–] NullPointerException@lemmy.zip 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The day I can digitally sign PDFs from this, it'd be the PDF editor. You're doing the Lord's work, thank you very much for this!

[–] alam@lemmy.world 37 points 1 week ago (4 children)

It's actually coming up in next release (: You will be able to sign with PKCS12, PFX and PEM certificates. And also validate them

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[–] Limeade3425@lemmy.zip 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thank you so much for this. We just started using it at our school. We were using StirlingPDF, but they went open core 🫤. Personally, I like that there is no auth, it keeps it simple.

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[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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

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[–] flightyhobler@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I've used Stirling pdf in the past. How does it compare?

[–] alam@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] stephaaaaan@feddit.org 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

What I would love to see is batch processing of mapped form fields from a PDF template, e.g. to fill out training certificate template pdfs with name, date, company, and instructor from a given CSV file, add a signature and print it. Is something like that possible? 🙂

We currently use nodered, python and reportlab and I‘m looking to somewht simplify the process :)

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[–] TheFinn@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 1 week ago (5 children)

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

[–] alam@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

As its fully client side, it doesn't expose any APIS. HOwever, I am writing an API only version of bentopdf on Rust

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[–] brian@piefed.social 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

From just a quick look so far, it seems really versatile. Thanks for the work you’ve put into this!

[–] alam@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

Thanks! Hope you like it

[–] Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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

[–] alam@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It has almost all the features of Acrobat except for the text editing, which i will be adding soon

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[–] kSPvhmTOlwvMd7Y7E@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The logo: all i see us the head between open legs

[–] alam@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's supposed to look like a B 🥀

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[–] ohlaph@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] CtrlAltDyeet@anarchist.nexus 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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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[–] DrunkAnRoot@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

love it been hosting mine for close to a month now

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