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Stirling PDF vs Smallpdf: catalog facts
Stirling PDF	Smallpdf
Freemium Free plan is $0/month with no card required (60+ tools, web/desktop/self-hosted, 500…	Freemium A limited free tier is available. Pro is a paid subscription.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Web, Self-hosted	Windows, 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	Clean, fast interface that covers the common PDF chores Desktop and mobile apps alongside the browser tools
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	Free use is capped at a couple of documents per day Files are processed on their servers
Self-hosted, Downloadable app, Web application, Hosted service	Web application
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.