Top 10 Free PDF Automation Tools for Developers in 2025 (Tested & Code-Ready)

from PyPDF2 import PdfMerger  
merger = PdfMerger()  
[merger.append(f) for f in ["doc1.pdf", "doc2.pdf"]]  # Merge files  
merger.write("merged.pdf")

from PyPDF2 import PdfReader, PdfWriter  
writer = PdfWriter()  
page = PdfReader("invoice.pdf").pages[0]  
page.merge_page(PdfReader("watermark.pdf").pages[0])  
writer.add_page(page)  
writer.write("watermarked.pdf")

import pdfplumber  
with pdfplumber.open("report.pdf") as pdf:  
    first_page = pdf.pages[0]  
    print(first_page.extract_text())  # Raw text  
    print(first_page.extract_table())  # Table data  

# Encrypt all PDFs in a folder  
find ./invoices -name "*.pdf" -exec pdftk {} output encrypted_{} encrypt_128bit owner_pw MyStrongPassword \;

import camelot  
tables = camelot.read_pdf("financials.pdf", pages="1-3")  
tables.export("data.csv", f="csv")  # Export all tables  

tables = camelot.read_pdf("table.pdf", flavor="lattice")

Add-Type -Path "itextsharp.dll"  
$doc = New-Object iTextSharp.text.Document  
$writer = [iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfWriter]::GetInstance($doc, [System.IO.File]::Create("output.pdf"))  
$doc.Open()  
$doc.Add([iTextSharp.text.Paragraph]::new("Hello, PowerShell PDF!"))  
$doc.Close()

import tabula  
tabula.convert_into("file.pdf", "output.csv", stream=True)

// Render PDF in browser  
const loadingTask = pdfjsLib.getDocument("doc.pdf");  
loadingTask.promise.then(pdf => {  
  pdf.getPage(1).then(page => {  
    const viewport = page.getViewport({ scale: 1.5 });  
    const canvas = document.getElementById("pdf-canvas");  
    page.render({ canvasContext: canvas.getContext("2d"), viewport });  
  });  
});

page.getTextContent().then(textContent => {  
  console.log(textContent.items.map(item => item.str).join(" "));  
});

// Split PDF into single pages  
PDDocument document = PDDocument.load(new File("input.pdf"));  
Splitter splitter = new Splitter();  
List<PDDocument> pages = splitter.split(document);  
pages.get(0).save("page1.pdf");  
document.close();

using Aspose.Pdf;  
var document = new Document();  
var page = document.Pages.Add();  
page.Paragraphs.Add(new TextFragment("Hello, C# PDF!"));  
document.Save("output.pdf");

document.Save("output.docx", SaveFormat.DocX);

from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas  
c = canvas.Canvas("invoice.pdf")  
c.drawString(100, 750, "Invoice #001")  
c.drawImage("logo.png", 50, 800, width=100, height=50)  
c.save()

from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph  
doc = SimpleDocTemplate("report.pdf")  
story = [Paragraph("Monthly Report"), ...]  
doc.build(story)

import fitz  
doc = fitz.open("locked.pdf")  
doc.authenticate("SUPER_SECRET")  # Password  
doc.save("unlocked.pdf")

from pdf2image import convert_from_path  
import pytesseract  

images = convert_from_path("scanned.pdf")  
text = pytesseract.image_to_string(images[0])  
with open("output.txt", "w") as f:  
    f.write(text)