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Stirling PDF vs Master PDF Editor: catalog facts
Stirling PDF	Master PDF Editor
Freemium Free plan is $0/month with no card required (60+ tools, web/desktop/self-hosted, 500…	Freemium An unregistered version offers limited non-commercial functions. Full editing requires a…
Windows, macOS, Linux, Web, Self-hosted	Windows, macOS, Linux
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	One of the few complete PDF editors with a real Linux build Handles forms, signatures and OCR alongside content editing
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	The unregistered version is limited and for non-commercial use only Closed source
Self-hosted, Downloadable app, Web application, Hosted service	Downloadable app
Open source	Closed source
License: MIT	License not stated
No account needed	Not stated if an account is needed
Works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 20, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 22, 2026

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