Java PDF Library Comparison: PDFBox, iText, JPedal, Datalogics

There is no single best Java PDF library. Apache PDFBox, Datalogics, iText and JPedal solve different problems, ship under very different licenses, and behave very differently when handed a badly formed file. This comparison puts them side by side so you can shortlist one before writing any code.

The Java JDK has no support for PDF files on its own. This can be added by using a third party native Java PDF library or a Java wrapper on a non-native PDF library. We cover examples of both.

Which one you need depends on the task. Creating documents, workflow processing, editing raw objects, and rendering pages are very different problems, and no single library is the best answer to all problems. Budget, license terms, implementation requirements, file security and support expectations narrow it further.

Java PDF libraries compared

Licensing, support and deployment compared

License and support terms rule libraries out faster than features do. If you ship closed-source software, the last column below is usually the deciding factor.

Which Java PDF library should you choose?

All of the libraries below expose a Java PDF API. Find the task, then the tool.

• Create PDF documents. iText.
• Debug a broken PDF. You need an inspector to view the PDF objects and the document tree. There are several approaches to debugging PDF files, including opening the raw structure in a text editor.
• Edit raw PDF objects. iText.
• Extract, print, or rasterize. Apache PDFBox or JPedal. See our guides to extracting text from PDF files in Java, printing PDF files from Java, and converting PDF to image in Java.
• Merge or parse existing files. See merging PDFs in Java and writing a Java PDF parser.
• Use the Adobe libraries from Java. Datalogics.

You can also use our extensive PDF Library guide to help you choose the right library for you. Alternatively, if you choose build your solution in-house, our build vs buy guide can help you figure out development timelines and implication for your specific workflows.

What can you do with JPedal?

JPedal is our commercial Java PDF library. It requires Java 17 or later and provides a Java PDF API allowing you to:

• Access and edit form and annotation data
• Add a PDF viewer to Java applications
• Convert PDF documents to images (including HEIC)
• Extract images, text, and metadata
• Inspect a PDF file
• Print PDF files
• Search text

What a feature comparison will not tell you

Every library in this comparison will open a well-formed PDF produced by Word or Acrobat. Evaluations are decided by the things a feature matrix leaves out.

• Behaviour on broken files. A meaningful share of PDF files in the wild violate the specification: damaged cross-reference tables, truncated streams, wrong object offsets. Libraries differ in whether they repair the file, throw an exception, or silently return a blank page.
• Font handling. When a font is not embedded, the library substitutes one. That decision changes line breaks, glyph widths and text positions, and therefore the coordinates any extraction code downstream depends on.
• Throughput and memory. Rendering one page interactively and rasterising fifty thousand pages overnight are different workloads. Test with your own page sizes, image density and concurrency rather than a sample file.
• Support response time. With a free library, a parsing bug in a customer's file is your problem to fix. Price that engineering time against a support contract before concluding the free option is cheaper.
• License audit exposure. AGPL obligations attach to software reached over a network, which catches internal web applications that were never intended to be distributed.

Whichever way you lean, benchmark the shortlist against a sample of your own real documents before committing to one.

FAQ

Does the JDK include a PDF library?

No. javax.print and java.awt.print can send a rendered image to a printer, and javax.imageio handles raster formats, but nothing in the standard library parses PDF syntax or decodes content streams. You need a third-party JAR for any PDF work.

Can I use the free version of iText in a closed-source commercial product?

No. The free distribution of iText is AGPL v3, which requires you to release the source of any application that uses it, including applications only reached over a network. Shipping closed-source software means buying a commercial license. Apache PDFBox is Apache 2.0 and carries no such requirement.

Why do two libraries produce different output from the same PDF?

PDF is a description of drawing operations, not a fixed rendering. Differences in font substitution when an embedded font is missing, color space and ICC profile handling, blend mode support, and shading pattern interpolation all produce visibly different pages from identical input. This is why rendering fidelity is worth testing against your own corpus rather than trusting a feature matrix.

Which Java PDF library is best for rendering accuracy?

There is no answer that holds for every file. Rendering accuracy is decided by font substitution, color space and ICC handling, blend modes, transparency groups and shading patterns, and each library implements those to a different depth. Build a corpus of the documents you actually process, render it with each candidate, and compare against a reference viewer. A library that renders your invoices perfectly may fail on your CAD drawings.

Is Apache PDFBox good enough for production?

For many workloads, yes. It is mature, Apache 2.0 licensed and widely deployed. The trade-off is support: there is no vendor to escalate to, so a rendering or parsing defect in a customer's file becomes your engineering backlog, and the fix arrives when the volunteer maintainers get to it. Teams with a deadline and a corpus of unpredictable third-party files usually find the total cost favours a commercial library.

What is the difference between a pure Java PDF library and a native wrapper?

A pure Java library is a JAR that runs anywhere the JVM runs, with no platform-specific binaries. A wrapper exposes a native library, usually C or C++, to Java through JNI. Wrappers can offer behaviour that is hard to replicate, but you have to ship and maintain a binary for every operating system and architecture you support, and a crash in native code takes the JVM with it. Apache PDFBox, iText and JPedal are pure Java; Datalogics wraps the native Adobe PDF Library.

//Convenience static method (see class for additional options)
ExtractClippedImages.writeAllClippedImagesToDir("inputFileOrDirectory", "outputDir", "outputImageFormat", new String[] {"imageHeightAsFloat", "subDirectoryForHeight"});

final PdfManipulator pdf = new PdfManipulator();
pdf.loadDocument(new File("inputFile.pdf"));
pdf.addPage(1, PaperSize.A4_LANDSCAPE);
pdf.addText(1, "Hello World", 10, 10, BaseFont.HelveticaBold, 12, 1, 0.3f, 0.2f);
pdf.addImage(1, new BufferedImage(), new float[] {0, 0, 100, 100});
pdf.rotatePage(1, 90);
pdf.apply();
pdf.writeDocument(new File("outputFile.pdf"));

Viewer viewer = new Viewer();
viewer.setupViewer();
viewer.executeCommand(ViewerCommands.OPENFILE, "pdfFile.pdf");

//Convenience static method (see class for additional options)
ExtractTextAsWordList.writeAllWordlistsToDir("inputFileOrDirectory", "outputDir", -1);

PdfMerge.mergeFiles(new File("inputFile1.pdf"), new File("inputFile2.pdf"), new File("outputFile.pdf"));

PdfManipulator.splitInHalf(new File("inputFile.pdf"), new File("outputFolder"), pageToSplitAt);

PrintPdfPages print = new PrintPdfPages("C:/pdfs/mypdf.pdf");

if (print.openPDFFile()) {
    print.printAllPages("Printer Name");
}

//Convenience static method (see class for additional options)
ExtractClippedImages.writeAllClippedImagesToDir("inputFileOrDirectory", "outputDir", "outputImageFormat", new String[] {"imageHeightAsFloat", "subDirectoryForHeight"});

//Convenience static method (see class for additional options)
ArrayList resultsForPages = FindTextInRectangle.findTextOnAllPages("/path/to/file.pdf", "textToFind");

java -jar jpedal.jar --inspect "inputFile.pdf"

PdfSigner.signPdf(
        "inputFile.pdf",
        "outputFile.pdf",
        "keystorePassword",
        "keystoreFile.p12",
        "signerName",
        "signerLocation",
        "signingReason",
        ACCESS_PERMISSION.P1
);