Alternatives to pdfjam
Command-line tool that combines, n-ups, rotates, scales and rearranges PDF pages into print-ready files. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
pdfjam
Command-line tool that combines, n-ups, rotates, scales and rearranges PDF pages into print-ready files.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as pdfjam.
PDF Mix Tool
A lightweight open-source Linux app for merging, splitting, rotating and rearranging PDF pages.
PDF Mix Tool offers N-up, booklet, merge and rotate in a lightweight Linux graphical app built on Qt and qpdf, with no LaTeX needed.
Cpdf
Command-line PDF toolkit covering split, merge, stamp and encrypt.
Cpdf covers a very wide range of page operations from one binary with language APIs, but it is closed source and free only for non-commercial use.
PDFtk Server
Command-line PDF toolkit for merging, splitting and stamping.
PDFtk Server merges, splits and stamps PDFs with a terse scriptable syntax and form filling from FDF, but commercial use needs a paid licence.
pdfcpu
Go library and command line for validating and transforming PDFs.
pdfcpu is an Apache-licensed single static binary and Go library for transforming PDFs with no dependencies, though some edge-case PDFs still fail.
qpdf
Command-line tool for content-preserving PDF transformations.
qpdf rewrites PDF structure losslessly and can dump PDFs to JSON for scripted editing, without LaTeX, but it is not focused on print layouts.
PDFsam Basic
Splits, merges, rotates and extracts PDF pages entirely offline, in batches rather than one file at a time.
PDFsam Basic offers batch split, merge, rotate and alternate-mix in an offline graphical app on Windows, macOS and Linux, without n-up or booklet layouts.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Ghostscript
PostScript and PDF interpreter behind a great deal of other software.
PDF Arranger
Drag PDF pages into the order you want, rotate them, crop them, and merge two files together.
mutool (MuPDF)
Command-line companion to MuPDF for PDF extraction, cleaning and merging.
krop
Simple graphical tool for cropping PDF pages and splitting them into subpages for e-readers.
