# Papermerge — Self-Hosted Document Management for Digital Archives

> Papermerge is a self-hosted, open-source document management system with OCR, full-text search, and hierarchical folder organization for scanned documents and PDFs.

## Install

Save in your project root:

# Papermerge — Self-Hosted Document Management for Digital Archives

## Quick Use
```bash
docker run -d --name papermerge -p 12000:80 
  -v pmg_data:/db -v pmg_media:/media 
  papermerge/papermerge:latest
# Open http://localhost:12000 — default login: admin / admin
```

## Introduction
Papermerge is a self-hosted document management system designed for scanned documents and PDFs. It applies OCR to turn image-based documents into searchable text and organizes them in a hierarchical folder structure with tags and metadata.

## What Papermerge Does
- Applies OCR to scanned documents and image-based PDFs automatically
- Provides full-text search across all ingested documents
- Organizes files in a hierarchical folder tree with drag-and-drop
- Supports tagging, metadata fields, and document versioning
- Offers a REST API for integration with external workflows

## Architecture Overview
Papermerge is a Python/Django application with a React-based frontend. OCR is handled by Tesseract, which runs as a background worker processing uploaded documents. The system stores metadata in PostgreSQL and files on the local filesystem or S3-compatible storage. A task queue (Redis + Celery) manages asynchronous OCR and indexing jobs.

## Self-Hosting & Configuration
- Deploy via Docker Compose with the official images for the app and worker
- Configure OCR languages by setting the `PAPERMERGE_OCR__DEFAULT_LANGUAGE` variable
- Use PostgreSQL as the database backend for production deployments
- Mount a persistent volume for `/media` to preserve uploaded documents
- Optionally configure S3-compatible storage for document files

## Key Features
- Automatic OCR on upload converts scanned pages into searchable text
- Full-text search powered by a search index across all document content
- Dual panel document viewer for side-by-side browsing and organization
- Role-based access control with user and group permissions
- REST API enables programmatic upload, search, and metadata management

## Comparison with Similar Tools
- **Paperless-ngx** — focuses on consumption and auto-tagging; Papermerge offers a richer folder hierarchy and dual-panel UI
- **Mayan EDMS** — enterprise DMS with workflows; Papermerge is lighter and faster to deploy
- **Docspell** — Scala-based with NLP tagging; Papermerge uses standard OCR and is Python-native
- **Teedy** — Java-based lightweight DMS; Papermerge has stronger OCR integration
- **Alfresco** — enterprise-grade, heavy; Papermerge targets home and small-team use

## FAQ
**Q: Which OCR languages are supported?**
A: Any language supported by Tesseract. Set the default language via environment variables and install additional language packs as needed.

**Q: Can I import existing PDF files in bulk?**
A: Yes. Place files in the import directory or use the REST API for batch uploads.

**Q: Does Papermerge handle multi-page documents?**
A: Yes. Multi-page PDFs are fully supported with per-page OCR and thumbnail generation.

**Q: What are the minimum system requirements?**
A: 2 GB RAM and 2 CPU cores are recommended for comfortable OCR processing speeds.

## Sources
- https://github.com/ciur/papermerge
- https://docs.papermerge.io

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Source: https://tokrepo.com/en/workflows/asset-8f730b37
Author: AI Open Source