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Stirling PDF vs PDFgear: catalog facts
Stirling PDF	PDFgear
Freemium Free plan is $0/month with no card required (60+ tools, web/desktop/self-hosted, 500…	Free Free to use on desktop, mobile and the web without an account.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Web, Self-hosted	Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Web
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	Editing, conversion, merging and signing at no cost No sign-up required
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	Closed source AI features send document content to an online service
Self-hosted, Downloadable app, Web application, Hosted service	Downloadable app, Web application
Open source	Closed source
License: MIT	License not stated
No account needed	No account 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 23, 2026

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