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Ghostscript

PostScript and PDF interpreter and SDK for converting, rasterising and compressing.

Jobs Compress Convert OCR

Since 1988

Operated by Artifex Software

Visit Ghostscript

Opens the vendor's own site.

Jobs covered

Open a task to see exactly what the vendor documentation supports.

Compress Browse all compress tools

reducing output PDF size when Ghostscript's pdfwrite device rewrites a PDF, using documented controls such as duplicate-image detection, compressed fonts and streams, and Flate or JPEG image parameters; pdfwrite creates a new PDF and may not carry across non-marking information such as comments

Convert Browse all convert tools

converting supported PostScript, PDF, XPS, PCL or PXL input to a newly written PDF through Ghostscript's pdfwrite device, where the output should look the same as the input but is not the same file and non-marking content such as comments may not carry across

OCR Browse all ocr tools

OCR through the pdfocr8, pdfocr24 and pdfocr32 devices in Ghostscript builds that include the Tesseract engine, which render input to an image, OCR it and wrap the image as a PDF with the recognised text added as invisible text; not available in every build

Where your files are processed

No server involved

Installed interpreter and embeddable SDK. It runs wherever you put it, including your own servers, but Artifex never sees the documents. That is a property of the library itself: what an application built with it does with your file depends on that application, not on this.

Architectural rather than a vendor claim: Ghostscript is an installed interpreter and SDK that reads and writes files on the machine it runs on, with no vendor service in the path. It is often embedded in server pipelines, but that server belongs to the customer - Artifex never sees the documents.

What it does

Ghostscript is an interpreter for PostScript and PDF that also ships as an embeddable graphics engine and SDK. From the command line it renders and converts documents to raster or vector formats, rewrites PDFs through its pdfwrite device - including downsampling images to shrink files - and can produce searchable output through an OCR device.

It is a conversion and print engine rather than an interactive editor: it manipulates content by re-interpreting it, not through object-level editing tools.

Best for

Developers and print, archive or SaaS pipelines that need a scriptable, embeddable conversion and compression engine running on their own infrastructure.

Worth knowing

The AGPL terms are strict and commercially significant: Artifex states you cannot deploy the open-source build as part of a server-based application or service without disclosing your own application's full source under AGPL. Commercial embedding normally means buying a licence, and Artifex publishes no list price.

Details, and where each comes from

Vendor statements, our own reading of their pages, and the things nobody has established yet, each answered separately. Where we have not confirmed something it says so rather than guessing, and a row nobody has established is greyed out.

Versions covered
Windows · macOS · Linux · API · Self-hosted
Website
ghostscript.com
Requires an account
Not applicable
Watermark on the free tier
No
Maximum file size
Not verified
Batch processing
Yes
Data residency
Self-hosted
Open source
Yes
Self-hostable
Yes
Licence
AGPL-3.0, dual-licensed with a commercial licence from Artifex
Redaction
No redaction feature
Programmatic access
Embeddable library · Command line
Last availability check
Responded in 402 ms 21 October 2026

Checked automatically by our own runner, not reported by the vendor. 100% of our last 30 checks got a response.

What the redaction verdict rests on

From the vendor's own documentation, read 22 September 2026. Not tested by us.

What that does not establish

The vendor’s own site was read on 22 September 2026 and contains no mention of redaction, sanitisation, blackout or whiteout. Absence from a vendor’s own material is not proof that a feature does not exist - it may be undocumented, or on a page the reading did not reach - but for a NEGATIVE claim it is the strongest evidence available, and it is weaker than a positive quote.

Recorded as such rather than presented as certainty.

https://www.ghostscript.com/

What the vendor says

Claims are labelled rather than repeated as fact. Where we have checked something ourselves, it says so and shows when. Checked means we read the vendor's own page and it says what we recorded - not that we tested the behaviour, unless the note says we did.

  • “The #1 PDF Conversion Tool and SDK Available Today”

    Checked by us - the source says this Read 22 September 2026

    Confirmed verbatim: "The #1 PDF Conversion Tool and SDK Available Today" is the site's own headline, unaltered. "#1" is a superlative with no ranking, survey or metric attached, and it is unverifiable from the page and was not pursued.

    It is worth recording next to the same vendor's licensing page, verified earlier in this campaign, which is unusually plain and candid about what the AGPL requires - one page selling hard, another explaining the terms without spin. Recorded as the vendor's wording.

    Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://ghostscript.com/
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    2a781fd0a29c1b71f4b710b066c8b8601d2682a0cbbe52d864e6f8e42c22b962

    How we checked

    Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://ghostscript.com/ re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-21. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-ghostscript-com-4d8e39a5.txt.

    What this hash proves, and what it does not

  • “You cannot deploy our open-source as part of a server-based application or service, without disclosing your own application's full source code under AGPL to any users interacting with it.”

    Checked by us - the source says this Read 22 September 2026

    Confirmed verbatim: the sentence appears under a heading reading "GNU AGPLv3 Usage Restrictions" and a sub-heading "AGPL-Compliant Environments Only". It is one of several conditions on the same page, and the others belong with it: modifications must be disclosed under the AGPL "including sharing the modified code with any users interacting with it", the producer line should be retained in created PDFs, and usage "must be limited to AGPL-compliant environments".

    The page then answers the obvious follow-up under "Can't Comply with AGPLv3?": a commercial licence is required. So the claim is not a warning buried in a licence text but the vendor's own plain-language summary of the terms, which is unusually clear.

    Recorded as the vendor's description; no control was run.

    Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://www.artifex.com/licensing/
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    e5742ca21744899c2130fe69d27bccb337ca90f705c897c7fbe9e2c4d3c77ed6

    How we checked

    Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://www.artifex.com/licensing/ re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-21. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-www-artifex-com-licensing-fc3ef02a.txt.

    What this hash proves, and what it does not

Each claim is quoted from the vendor's own pages. This section describes what we have and have not checked - it is not a judgement about anyone.

Sponsorship is distribution, not an endorsement or a promise of search rankings, AI citations, traffic, or sales. This listing is a free entry, compiled from published sources.

Visit Ghostscript Report a problem

Related reading

How this record was put together

Editorial review.
No editor has signed this record off. That is not the same as nothing having been checked, and the lines below say what has.
Source reading.
2 claims taken from the vendor's own pages, read between 22 September 2026 and 22 September 2026.
Website availability.
The vendor's site was last checked on 21 October 2026.
Behaviour testing.
We ran this ourselves. The file handling was watched directly.

Sources: ghostscript.com; ghostscript.readthedocs.io (home, Readme, Use); artifex.com/licensing. Licence confirmed in the official docs and on the Artifex licensing page.