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https://github.com/qrcommunication/gigapdf

Self-hostable open-source WYSIWYG PDF editor — edit text, images & forms in the browser, with a complete REST API and embeddable widget. Next.js + FastAPI, AGPLv3.
https://github.com/qrcommunication/gigapdf

docker document-management fabricjs fastapi nextjs ocr open-source pdf pdf-api pdf-editing pdf-editor pdf-forms pdf-generation pdf-tools pdfjs python react self-hosted typescript wysiwyg

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Self-hostable open-source WYSIWYG PDF editor — edit text, images & forms in the browser, with a complete REST API and embeddable widget. Next.js + FastAPI, AGPLv3.

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README 

          


  

    

    

    GigaPDF

  




GigaPDF





  The self-hostable WYSIWYG PDF editor — edit text, images, forms and

  pages in your browser, with a complete REST API.


  Powered by an in-house, zero-dependency Rust → WebAssembly PDF engine.


  Open source, source-available under PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0

  (commercial licensing available).






  

    License: PolyForm-Noncommercial-1.0.0

  

  

    Trademark Protected

  

  

    CI

  

  

    Security Audit

  

  

    GitHub Stars

  

  

    Cloud

  






  Why GigaPDF? •

  The Engine •

  Quick Start •

  Cloud vs Self-hosting •

  Features •

  Contributing




---



## Why GigaPDF?



- **A real PDF engine, not a viewer overlay** — GigaPDF reads and rewrites the

  PDF content stream directly through its own

  **[gigapdf-lib](https://github.com/QrCommunication/gigapdf-lib)** engine

  (Rust, compiled to WebAssembly). Editing a paragraph actually re-flows the

  document — it doesn't just paint a sticker on top of it.

- **Zero third-party processing dependencies** — Office conversion, HTML → PDF,

  OCR, font embedding, rasterization, digital signatures and encryption are all

  built in. **No LibreOffice, no Tesseract, no Chromium, no Poppler, no MuPDF.**

  Your `docker compose` is the whole stack.

- **True WYSIWYG editing** — Edit text, images, shapes and forms directly in the

  PDF, with full font re-embedding for pixel-accurate output.

- **Self-hostable from day one** — `docker compose up` and you're running. No

  cloud lock-in, no telemetry; your documents stay on your infrastructure

  (OCR and AI search included — nothing is sent to a third party).

- **API-first design** — A complete, OpenAPI-documented REST API so you can

  embed PDF editing and processing into your own apps.



## The Engine



The heart of GigaPDF is **gigapdf-lib**, a from-scratch PDF engine written in

Rust and compiled to WebAssembly. It manipulates the PDF format at its lowest

level and ships in a single self-contained `.wasm` — no native system binaries.



| Capability | What it does |

|---|---|

| **Document editing** | Content-stream level text add/edit/remove, shapes, images, opacity, z-order — real edits, not a cosmetic overlay |

| **Redaction** | Physically removes the underlying content stream (not a black box on top) |

| **Digital signatures** | PKCS#7 / `adbe.pkcs7.detached` with your own X.509 certificate, RSA keygen included |

| **Encryption** | Standard Security Handler — read & write RC4, AES-128 and AES-256 |

| **Fonts** | TrueType / CFF / Type1 parsing, CID embedding, `ToUnicode` CMaps (no tofu), faithful re-embedding |

| **OCR** | Server-side, in-house — turns scans into searchable text with **no Tesseract** |

| **Office ⇄ PDF** | Native Word/Excel/PowerPoint/OpenDocument import & export — **no LibreOffice** |

| **HTML / URL → PDF** | Built-in HTML+CSS layout and rendering engine — **no Chromium/Playwright** |

| **Rasterization** | In-house PNG renderer (vectors + TrueType/CFF glyphs) for previews and thumbnails |

| **Crypto** | Dependency-free MD5, RC4, AES, SHA-256/512, RSA — no OpenSSL |



All of it is auditable, runs on your own infrastructure, and carries no

AGPL/GPL system-binary baggage.



## Quick start (self-hosting)



GigaPDF can be self-hosted in two ways: **Docker** (recommended) or

**native** (bare-metal / VPS).



### Option 1 — Docker (recommended)



Prerequisites: Docker 24+ with the Compose plugin.



```bash

git clone https://github.com/QrCommunication/gigapdf.git

cd gigapdf

cp .env.example .env             # edit values, especially LEGAL_*

cp apps/web/.env.example apps/web/.env.local

docker compose up -d

# App at http://localhost:3000

```



The compose stack starts six services:



| Service | Image / build | Port |

|---|---|---|

| `postgres` | `postgres:17-alpine` | 5432 |

| `redis` | `redis:8-alpine` | 6379 |

| `api` | FastAPI backend (`Dockerfile.api`) | 8000 |

| `celery-worker` + `celery-beat` | Background jobs (`Dockerfile.api`) | — |

| `web` | Next.js frontend (`Dockerfile.web`) | 3000 |

| `admin` | Admin dashboard (`Dockerfile.admin`) | 3001 |



The images are based on **Debian bookworm**. All PDF, OCR, Office conversion,

font processing and HTML rendering run inside the in-house **gigapdf-lib**

Rust → WASM engine — **no third-party system binaries are installed or

required** (no LibreOffice, Tesseract, Chromium, Poppler or fontforge).



> ⚠️ **Self-hosters must configure `NEXT_PUBLIC_LEGAL_*` env vars** in

> `apps/web/.env.local` for LCEN compliance. The web app refuses to start in

> production mode without them. See `apps/web/.env.example`.



### Option 2 — Native (bare-metal / VPS)



Prerequisites:



- **Node.js 24** + **pnpm 10**

- **Python 3.12** + venv (backend API, `requirements.txt`)

- **PostgreSQL 17** and **Redis 8**



Build and install:



```bash

git clone https://github.com/QrCommunication/gigapdf.git

cd gigapdf



# Backend (FastAPI + Celery)

python3.12 -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate

pip install -r requirements.txt



# Frontend (Next.js web + admin + shared packages)

pnpm install && pnpm build

```



Run the services behind a reverse proxy. The repository ships systemd units

(`deploy/systemd/`) and an Nginx configuration (`deploy/nginx.conf`) whose

routing pattern is:



- `/api/pdf/*` and `/api/auth/*` → **Next.js** (`:3000`, where the PDF engine runs)

- `/api/*`, `/socket.io/*`, `/webhooks/*` → **FastAPI** (`:8000`)

- `/admin` → admin dashboard (`:3001`)

- everything else → Next.js web (`:3000`)



See [`docs/guides/INSTALLATION.md`](docs/guides/INSTALLATION.md) and

[`docs/guides/DEPLOYMENT.md`](docs/guides/DEPLOYMENT.md) for the full

walkthrough.



## Cloud vs Self-hosting



| | Cloud (giga-pdf.com) | Self-hosted |

|---|---|---|

| **Setup** | Zero config | Docker / Kubernetes |

| **Updates** | Automatic | Manual (`git pull`) |

| **Support** | Email / SLA | Community (GitHub Discussions) |

| **Cost** | Subscription | Free (your infra cost) |

| **Data residency** | EU (Scaleway, Paris) | Wherever you host |

| **Customization** | Configuration only | Full code access |



The cloud version is operated by [QR Communication SAS](https://qrcommunication.com).

The self-hosted version uses the exact same code base.



## Features



### PDF editing

- **Visual WYSIWYG editor** — Canvas-based editing with drag-and-drop and

  professional navigation: native scrolling while zoomed, cursor-anchored

  Ctrl+wheel zoom, 50–400% presets, Fit page / Fit width (Ctrl+0 / Ctrl+1),

  Space or middle-click panning

- **Text manipulation** — Add, edit, format text (bold, italic, underline,

  alignment); edits re-flow the underlying content stream

- **Faithful fonts** — Automatic identification of the PDF's fonts with

  on-demand Google Fonts download through a server-side proxy

  (`/api/fonts/google`, DB + IndexedDB cache, no client request ever reaches

  Google); the downloaded font is embedded in the final PDF

- **Images & shapes** — Insert, move, resize, restyle and delete images and

  vector shapes; opacity and z-order are baked into the document

- **Annotations** — Highlights, comments, stamps, freehand drawings

- **Form designer** — Design and fill interactive PDF forms: text, multiline,

  date, checkbox, radio groups and dropdowns with editable options; required /

  read-only fields, defaults, max length and tab-order reordering; Design /

  Fill modes with highlighting of the document's existing fields and flattening

  after filling

- **Layers & multi-selection** — Persistent layer groups with per-element

  visibility and locking; batch-edit opacity, colors and alignment across a

  multi-selection



### Document operations

- Page management (add, remove, reorder, rotate, duplicate, extract)

- Merge & split documents — including **universal merge**

  (`POST /api/pdf/merge-universal`): any combination of PDF, Word, Excel,

  PowerPoint, OpenDocument, images, HTML, text and RTF files is accepted; each

  is converted automatically before merging

- Compression with the achieved ratio shown before applying

- Encryption & password protection (RC4 / AES-128 / AES-256), and unlocking

- **Digital signatures (PKCS#7)** with your own P12/PFX certificate —

  processed in memory only, never stored

- **Redaction** — content is physically removed from the PDF, not just masked

- Watermarking (single page or whole document)

- PDF/A conversion

- **OCR** — server-side text recognition on scans and images, built on

  state-of-the-art PaddleOCR models run through an in-house runtime (no

  Tesseract, no third-party service): a dozen printed scripts — Latin, Cyrillic,

  Arabic, Hebrew, Indic (Devanagari, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada) and CJK — plus

  opt-in Latin (French included), Cyrillic and Greek handwriting; with a

  "searchable PDF" mode that adds an invisible text layer to image-only pages

- Conversion (HTML → PDF, URL → PDF; Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OpenDocument

  ⇄ PDF — import `.doc`/`.docx`/`.xls`/`.xlsx`/`.ppt`/`.pptx`/`.odt`/`.ods`/`.odp`/`.rtf`/`.md`/`.csv`/`.txt`/`.html`,

  export DOCX/XLSX/PPTX/ODT/ODP/RTF/HTML/Markdown/text and EPUB; images ⇄ PDF;

  all processed natively by gigapdf-lib)

- Sharing (email invitations, public links) and a document detail page with

  version history, one-click restore and activity history



### Document management

- Trash with restore — deleted documents are recoverable for 30 days, then

  purged automatically

- Tags with filtering and autocomplete

- Full-text search across document names and content (PostgreSQL `tsvector` +

  GIN index)

- **Semantic document search** (`GET /api/v1/search/semantic`) — vector search

  across document contents, with embeddings computed **locally** on your own

  infrastructure (no external AI service)

- **Global command palette** (Ctrl/Cmd+K) — navigate to any tool or page and

  trigger semantic search from anywhere in the app

- Real thumbnails generated at upload and refreshed after editing

- Document duplication, folder organization & renaming

- Parallel uploads (3 concurrent)



### Public site & localization

- Bilingual app — interface in French and English; public pages are served

  under locale-prefixed URLs (French by default, English under `/en/*`) with

  per-page canonical and `fr`/`en`/`x-default` hreflang

- **36 PDF tools** with a "Features" mega-menu listing them all by category,

  available on every page of the marketing site

- 48 SEO guide pages (36 PDF tools, 10 professions, 2 hubs) written in both

  languages with localized slugs and JSON-LD structured data

  (SoftwareApplication, HowTo, FAQPage)



### Developer tools

- **REST API** — Complete OpenAPI spec, see `docs/api/`

- **Webhooks** — Document lifecycle events

- **Real-time collaboration** — WebSocket-based: live element sync on the

  canvas, multiple cursors



## Architecture



GigaPDF is a pnpm + Turbo monorepo:



```

apps/

  web/        Next.js 16 frontend + PDF API routes (/api/pdf, /api/auth, /api/fonts)

  admin/      Admin dashboard (Next.js 16)

  mobile/     Expo / React Native app

packages/

  pdf-engine/ TypeScript layer that drives the gigapdf-lib WASM engine

  canvas/     Fabric.js editor canvas

  editor/     React editor components

  embed/      Embeddable widget

  billing/    Stripe integration (optional)

  api/        TypeScript API client

  ui/         Shared UI components (shadcn-based)

  ...

```



- **Frontend**: Next.js 16, React 19, Fabric.js, better-auth, Prisma, Zustand,

  TanStack Query, Tailwind CSS v4.

- **Backend**: FastAPI (Python 3.12), Celery + Celery Beat, Socket.IO,

  PostgreSQL 17 (with `pgvector`), Redis 8, offline `fastembed` embeddings,

  Stripe for billing.

- **PDF engine**: [gigapdf-lib](https://github.com/QrCommunication/gigapdf-lib)

  — Rust compiled to WebAssembly, zero third-party dependency, consumed from

  `packages/pdf-engine` and the `/api/pdf/*` routes.



See [`docs/ARCHITECTURE.md`](docs/ARCHITECTURE.md) for details.



## Contributing



Contributions are welcome! Please:



1. Read [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md)

2. Sign your commits with DCO: `git commit -s` (every commit, no exceptions)

3. Read the [Code of Conduct](CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md)



## Security



Found a vulnerability? **Do not open a public issue.** See [SECURITY.md](SECURITY.md)

for the private reporting process (GitHub Security Advisory or

contact@qrcommunication.com).



## License & Trademark



GigaPDF has **two distinct licensing regimes**:



### Code: PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 (source-available)



The source code is source-available under [PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0](LICENSE):

free to use, study, modify and redistribute for any **noncommercial** purpose.

**Commercial use requires a separate license** — contact QR Communication at

 to discuss it.



### Name & logo: Trademarks of QR Communication SAS



The "GigaPDF" name and logo are trademarks of **QR Communication SAS**.

**Forks with code modifications must rebrand entirely** (different name,

different logo, different domain). See [TRADEMARK.md](TRADEMARK.md) for details.

Logo assets are in [`branding/`](branding/) under [CC-BY-ND 4.0](branding/LICENSE).



## About



GigaPDF is built and maintained by [QR Communication](https://qrcommunication.com),

a Paris-based company.



- 🌐 **Cloud version**: https://giga-pdf.com

- 💬 **Discussions**: https://github.com/QrCommunication/gigapdf/discussions

- 📧 **Contact**: contact@qrcommunication.com

- 🐛 **Issues**: https://github.com/QrCommunication/gigapdf/issues