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PDFgear vs Stirling PDF: catalog facts
PDFgear	Stirling PDF
Free Free to use on desktop, mobile and the web without an account.	Freemium Free plan is $0/month with no card required (60+ tools, web/desktop/self-hosted, 500…
Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Web	Windows, macOS, Linux, Web, Self-hosted
Editing, conversion, merging and signing at no cost No sign-up required	55+ PDF tools covering signing, converting, merging, editing, OCR and redaction, chained in a stateful workspace with… Runs on Docker, bare metal, Kubernetes or as native desktop apps for Windows, macOS and Linux
Closed source AI features send document content to an online service	Open-core: SSO, external database, Google Drive integration, SAML and audit logs are gated behind paid Team or… Manual server setup needs Java 25+ plus LibreOffice and Tesseract for conversions and OCR
Downloadable app, Web application	Self-hosted, Downloadable app, Web application, Hosted service
Closed source	Open source
License not stated	License: MIT
No account needed	No account needed
Not stated if it works offline	Works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 23, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 20, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.