Introduction
BentoPDF bundles the most common PDF operations into a single self-hosted web app. Because everything runs on your own server, sensitive documents never leave your network.
What BentoPDF Does
- Merges multiple PDF files into a single document
- Splits PDFs by page ranges or extracts individual pages
- Converts images (JPG, PNG) to PDF and PDF pages to images
- Performs OCR on scanned documents to make text searchable
- Compresses PDF file sizes while preserving readability
Architecture Overview
BentoPDF is a JavaScript and TypeScript application using pdf-lib, Tesseract.js, and other libraries for PDF manipulation. The web frontend provides a drag-and-drop interface that communicates with a backend API. All processing happens server-side in the container.
Self-Hosting & Configuration
- Deploy with a single Docker command, no external database needed
- Configure upload size limits via environment variables
- Mount a volume if you want to persist processed files
- Place behind a reverse proxy for TLS and access control
- Customize the UI theme through configuration options
Key Features
- All-in-one PDF operations in a single web interface
- Privacy-first: files are processed locally and never leave your server
- OCR support for extracting text from scanned PDFs
- Batch processing for handling multiple files at once
- Lightweight container with minimal system requirements
Comparison with Similar Tools
- Stirling PDF — similar self-hosted PDF toolkit with a broader feature set
- ILovePDF — cloud-hosted service that processes files on external servers; BentoPDF keeps files local
- Smallpdf — freemium cloud service with usage limits; BentoPDF is free and unlimited
- pdftk — CLI-only tool; BentoPDF provides a graphical web interface
- ConvertX — general file converter; BentoPDF specializes in PDF-specific operations
FAQ
Q: Does BentoPDF require a database? A: No, it runs without an external database. File processing is stateless.
Q: What OCR languages are supported? A: BentoPDF uses Tesseract for OCR and supports multiple languages. Additional language packs can be added to the container.
Q: Is there a file size limit? A: The default limit is configurable. Since you host it yourself, you can set it as high as your server resources allow.
Q: Can I use BentoPDF for batch operations? A: Yes, you can upload and process multiple files in a single operation through the web interface.