iText vs Apryse
Two developer PDF libraries, and one company owns both.
The short answer
This is not a choice between two independent suppliers: Apryse acquired iText in 2022. The practical difference is licensing. iText's core is AGPL, which obliges you to offer the source of what you distribute and, under the network clause, of what you run as a service other people reach. Apryse is a commercial licence whose entry price starts in four figures a year.
The difference that decides it
So the question is which licence you can live with, not which library is better. If you cannot open-source what you build, you are buying from the company that owns the alternative. Check the add-ons rather than the headline, because they are not all under the same licence as the core, and the record sets out which are open and which are not.
These are the same company.
Both are operated by Apryse, so choosing between them is not choosing between two independent suppliers. That does not make either one bad - it changes what the choice means.
Side by side
8 of 11 rows differ
| Compared | iText | Apryse |
|---|---|---|
| Files stay on your device | No server involved | Mixed - depends on version and feature |
| Redaction | Removes the content | Removes the content |
| Price | Free tier | From £1,112.55 a year |
| Free tier | Yes | No |
| Platforms | Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted | Web · Linux · iOS · Android · API · Self-hosted |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Data residency | Not verified | Multiple regions |
| Programmatic access | Embeddable library | Embeddable library · Browser JavaScript |
| Owner | Apryse | Apryse |
| Website responded | Responded in 387 ms | Responded in 156 ms |
Rows that differ are shown in full contrast; rows where the two agree are dimmed. Every value here comes from the individual records, where each one names the page it came from - and says plainly when something has not been verified rather than filling the gap.
iText
Java and .NET PDF library with an AGPL-3.0 core and component-specific licensing.
Visit iText Opens the vendor's own site.
Apryse
Commercial PDF SDK best known for WebViewer, its in-browser document SDK.
Visit Apryse Opens the vendor's own site.
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