| 1 |
PyMuPDF |
|
10/10 |
3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
- GPT-6 Luna (#1) Excellent all-around library for fast reading, editing, annotations, and form-field workflows.
- Gemini 4 Argon (#1) Blazingly fast, comprehensive tool for reading, editing, rendering, and filling PDF forms effortlessly.
- Qwen 3.8 Flash (#1) Fastest all-rounder: read, edit, fill forms, render.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (#1) Fastest, most capable PDF engine with text, images, and annotation editing.
- GLM-5.3 (#1) Fastest, most versatile: extract text/images, edit, fill forms, annotate.
- Kimi K3 (#1) Fastest and most powerful for editing, rendering, and text extraction overall.
- MiniMax M3 (#1) Fastest, most complete library for reading/editing/extracting PDFs.
- Mistral Large 4 (#1) Fastest, most complete PDF toolkit with excellent rendering and editing.
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (#3) Fast, feature-rich library for reading, editing, and annotating PDFs via MuPDF.
- Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (#5) Fast, feature-rich rendering, editing, and text extraction via Fitz.
|
| 2 |
pdfplumber |
|
10/10 |
2 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 2 |
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (#2) Excellent for extracting text, tables, and coordinates from PDFs.
- GLM-5.3 (#2) Best for precise text and table extraction with positional data.
- MiniMax M3 (#2) Best for precise text and table extraction from PDFs.
- Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (#2) Excellent for text and table extraction with precise layout analysis.
- GPT-6 Luna (#3) Particularly effective for extracting text, tables, and layout-aware content.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (#3) Unmatched for precise text and table extraction and layout inspection.
- Gemini 4 Argon (#4) Unmatched precision for extracting complex tables, text, and layout data from existing PDFs.
- Qwen 3.8 Flash (#4) Best-in-class table and text extraction quality.
- Kimi K3 (#4) Best-in-class for extracting tables and precise text positions from PDFs.
- Mistral Large 4 (#5) Excellent for extracting text and tables with precise layout awareness.
|
| 3 |
pypdf |
|
9/10 |
1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 2 | 3 | | 7 |
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (#1) Actively maintained pure-Python library for reading, merging, splitting, and editing PDFs.
- GPT-6 Luna (#2) Strong pure-Python choice for reading, merging, editing, and filling AcroForm fields.
- Gemini 4 Argon (#2) Pure-Python standard for splitting, merging, reading, and filling PDF forms without external dependencies.
- Qwen 3.8 Flash (#2) Pure-Python standard for merging, splitting, form filling.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (#2) Best general-purpose pure-Python read/write, split, merge, and form filling.
- Kimi K3 (#2) Most actively maintained pure-Python library for reading, merging, and filling PDF forms.
- MiniMax M3 (#3) Pure-Python, reliable for merging, splitting, and basic editing.
- GLM-5.3 (#6) Pure-Python standard for merging, splitting, encrypting, filling forms.
- Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (#7) Actively maintained fork of PyPDF2 with improved merge and encryption support.
|
| 4 |
reportlab |
|
9/10 |
6 | | 8 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
- Qwen 3.8 Flash (#3) Powerful PDF creation and overlay-based form filling.
- GLM-5.3 (#3) Powerful programmatic PDF generation and editing via canvas flows.
- Kimi K3 (#3) The standard for programmatically generating and filling complex PDF documents.
- Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (#3) Powerful programmatic PDF creation from scratch.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (#4) The standard for generating and programmatically filling PDFs from scratch.
- MiniMax M3 (#4) Top choice for generating and programmatically filling PDFs.
- Mistral Large 4 (#4) Industry standard for generating PDFs programmatically from scratch.
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (#6) Strong for generating new PDFs, though less suited to editing existing ones.
- Gemini 4 Argon (#8) Industry-standard engine for generating PDFs and overlaying dynamic content onto existing templates.
|
| 5 |
pikepdf |
|
9/10 |
7 | | 3 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 8 | 5 | 2 | 10 |
- Mistral Large 4 (#2) Best for low-level PDF manipulation and optimization based on QPDF.
- Gemini 4 Argon (#3) QPDF-powered library offering robust low-level PDF editing, manipulation, and reliable structural repairs.
- MiniMax M3 (#5) Powerful for repairing, optimizing, and advanced PDF editing.
- Qwen 3.8 Flash (#6) Deep structural editing via QPDF backend.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (#6) Robust low-level QPDF-backed editing, repair, and object manipulation.
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (#7) Powerful QPDF-based library for low-level PDF editing and repair.
- Kimi K3 (#8) Built on qpdf; excellent for structural editing, repair, and optimization.
|
| 6 |
pdfrw |
|
8/10 |
4 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | | 6 | | 7 | 6 |
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (#4) Lightweight library for reading and filling PDF form fields.
- GPT-6 Luna (#5) Useful for low-level PDF manipulation and filling existing AcroForms.
- Qwen 3.8 Flash (#5) Lightweight reading/writing with template page reuse.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (#5) Simple, reliable AcroForm filling and page merging with a light footprint.
- Gemini 4 Argon (#6) Lightweight pure-Python library well-suited for custom PDF manipulation and basic form filling.
- Kimi K3 (#6) Lightweight and reliable for form filling and low-level PDF manipulation.
- Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (#6) Reads and writes PDFs with low-level object manipulation.
- Mistral Large 4 (#7) Great for reading, writing, and form-filling in existing PDFs.
|
| 7 |
PyPDF2 |
|
7/10 |
5 | 9 | | | 8 | 7 | | 8 | 3 | 1 |
- Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (#1) Pure-Python, widely used for basic reading, splitting, and page editing.
- Mistral Large 4 (#3) Simple, pure-Python library for merging, splitting, and basic edits.
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (#5) Predecessor to pypdf; still widely used but now deprecated in favor of pypdf.
- GLM-5.3 (#7) Legacy predecessor of pypdf; still widely used but unmaintained.
- MiniMax M3 (#8) Classic library still widely used despite slower updates.
|
| 8 |
borb |
|
9/10 |
10 | 4 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 8 | |
- GPT-6 Luna (#4) Broad toolkit supporting PDF creation, reading, editing, and form filling.
- MiniMax M3 (#6) Modern pure-Python library for reading/writing/encrypting PDFs.
- Gemini 4 Argon (#7) Feature-rich pure-Python library capable of reading, modifying, and creating complex PDF forms.
- Qwen 3.8 Flash (#7) Modern API for creating, editing, signing PDFs.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (#7) Modern, expressive API for layout, forms, and structured PDF creation.
- Kimi K3 (#7) Modern all-in-one library for reading, writing, and editing with clean API.
- GLM-5.3 (#8) Modern library for reading, writing, and editing PDFs in pure Python.
- Mistral Large 4 (#8) Modern, actively maintained library for creating and editing PDFs.
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (#10) Pure-Python library supporting reading, creating, and manipulating PDFs.
|
| 9 |
pdfminer.six |
|
8/10 |
9 | 8 | | | 9 | 9 | 5 | 7 | 6 | 8 |
- Kimi K3 (#5) Deep text extraction with layout analysis, though slower and harder to use.
- Mistral Large 4 (#6) Most accurate text extraction engine, handles complex PDF structures.
- MiniMax M3 (#7) Excellent low-level text extraction with layout analysis.
- GPT-6 Luna (#8) Detailed text and layout extraction, though less suited to editing.
- Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (#8) Deep text analysis and PDF content parsing for searchable documents.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (#9) Deep, precise parsing of text positions, fonts, and document internals.
- GLM-5.3 (#9) Robust low-level text extraction; foundation of many tools.
|
| 10 |
fpdf2 |
|
7/10 |
8 | | 10 | 8 | 10 | 4 | | 10 | | 9 |
- GLM-5.3 (#4) Lightweight, clean API for creating and modifying PDFs quickly.
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (#8) Simple library for creating PDFs; limited for reading or editing existing files.
- Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (#9) Simple, lightweight library for generating PDFs from Python.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (#10) Minimal, dependency-light library for quick programmatic PDF generation.
- MiniMax M3 (#10) Lightweight library for creating PDFs from scratch easily.
|
| 11 |
pdfkit |
|
2/10 |
| | | | | | | | 10 | 4 |
- Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (#4) Wkhtmltopdf wrapper ideal for converting HTML to PDF.
|
| 12 |
pypdfium2 |
|
1/10 |
| | 5 | | | | | | | |
- Gemini 4 Argon (#5) Fast, permissive bindings to PDFium for reliable high-speed rendering, inspection, and manipulation.
|
| 13 |
PDFium |
|
1/10 |
| 6 | | | | | | | | |
|
| 14 |
PyPDFForm |
|
1/10 |
| 7 | | | | | | | | |
- GPT-6 Luna (#7) Focused, convenient API for populating fillable PDF forms.
|
| 15 |
fillpdf |
|
3/10 |
| | 9 | 10 | | 10 | | | | |
- Gemini 4 Argon (#9) Focused specifically on simplifying the process of filling and flattening interactive PDF forms.
- GLM-5.3 (#10) Simple form-filling and flattening built on pypdf.
|