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PDFsam Visual vs Stirling PDF: catalog facts
PDFsam Visual	Stirling PDF
Freemium Several tools are free; premium tools need a subscription or perpetual license after a…	Freemium Free plan is $0/month with no card required (60+ tools, web/desktop/self-hosted, 500…
Windows	Windows, macOS, Linux, Web, Self-hosted
Thumbnail-based page organizing, extracting and splitting More than 25 PDF tools in one desktop app	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
Most visual page tools require a paid license Not open source, unlike PDFsam Basic	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	Self-hosted, Downloadable app, Web application, Hosted service
Closed source	Open source
License: Proprietary	License: MIT
Not stated if an account is needed	No account needed
Works offline	Works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 1, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 20, 2026

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