PDFium
The facts below are what the maker publishes about PDFium, checked and dated. Our editors have not written about it yet.
Plans and prices
From PDFium's own pricing page, checked 4 Oct 2026.
| Plan | Price | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| PDFium (Apache License 2.0) | Free | No charge or royalty under the license · build and embed the source yourself |
The facts
Each one read from PDFium's own pages, with the date it was checked.
What it does
- API stability limit
- Only headers under public/ are intended for embedders; code outside that directory may change at any time and should not be called directly.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Architecture limit
- The project says some code may not work properly on big-endian architectures and that supporting them is not currently a priority.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Build tools
- PDFium uses Chromium's build tooling, with GN generating build files and Ninja executing them.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Compiler support
- PDFium currently supports Clang, allows community-contributed GCC patches, and does not accept MSVC patches.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Document features
- The core document logic includes bookmarks, annotations, interactive AcroForms, and links.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Embedding
- The public directory contains API headers intended for use by applications embedding PDFium, and the project aims to keep those APIs stable.checked 4 Oct 2026
- JavaScript and XFA
- Builds enable JavaScript and XFA form support by default; either can be disabled, and XFA requires JavaScript.checked 4 Oct 2026
- License
- The repository license grants perpetual, worldwide, no-charge, royalty-free rights to use, reproduce, modify, and distribute the work subject to its terms.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Purpose
- PDFium is a C++ implementation of the PDF specification that can parse PDF content and render pages.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Security reporting
- The project directs security bug reports to Google Bug Hunters and lets project members and embedders use Chromium's security bug template.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Support and community
- The project lists PDFium, PDFium Reviews, and PDFium Bugs mailing lists; the reviews and bugs lists are typically read-only.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Test utility
- The standalone pdfium_test utility can read, parse, and rasterize PDF pages into PPM or PNG images.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Text tools
- PDFium's text module supports extracting text, identifying reading order, and searching within a page.checked 4 Oct 2026
Where it runs
- Platforms and architectures
- The project documents builds for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android; default CPU targets are x64 on Windows, Linux, and Mac, and arm for Android.checked 4 Oct 2026
Alternatives to PDFium
- 1
MuPDF
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ComPDFKit PDF SDK
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Spire.PDF
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Aspose.PDF
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WeasyPrint
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PDFsharp
Free planLinuxmacOSSelf-hostedWindows6.8$499 one-time