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MuPDF (mutool)

Fast C PDF library plus the mutool command-line suite.

Jobs Convert Merge Compress Sign Edit Protect

Operated by Artifex Software

Where your files are processed

No server involved

Installed command-line binary and embeddable C library. Documents are read and written on the machine running it. 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: mutool is an installed binary and the MuPDF core is a library you link into your own program, so documents are read and written on the machine running it. There is no account and no hosted step.

What it does

MuPDF is a small, fast C library for viewing, converting and manipulating PDF, XPS and e-book documents, and mutool is the command-line program bundled with it. Its subcommands render and convert documents, rewrite and repair files, filter and label pages, set or remove encryption, merge inputs, extract text, images and fonts, and sign or verify signature fields. It is a scripting and embedding toolkit rather than a point-and-click editor.

Best for: Developers and technical users who want one fast, dependency-light engine they can drive from shell scripts, a C program, or a JavaScript, Java or Python binding.

Worth knowing: It is a toolkit, not an editor — there is no rich graphical content editing, and the AGPL applies to embedding, so shipping it inside a proprietary product requires a commercial licence from Artifex, whose price is not published.

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
mupdf.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
Removes the content
Programmatic access
Embeddable library · Command line
Last availability check
Responded in 203 ms 16 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 4 October 2026. Not tested by us.

“MuPDF documents redaction on its own PDFPage API, where a redaction annotation identifies an area whose content should be removed, and the options determine what happens to the images and text the area covers.”

What that does not establish: This is the MuPDF PDFPage API, which is reached through a binding, and it is not the same thing as a mutool subcommand: mutool’s overview lists a different collection of command-line operations. The record previously cited PyMuPDF’s Page documentation as the evidence for this whole entry, which named the wrong interface. Content removal is a documented capability and independent redaction safety remains untested.

https://mupdf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reference/javascript/types/PDFPage.html

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.

  • “MuPDF is the fast & powerful solution for managing PDF and other document formats.”

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

    Confirmed verbatim: "MuPDF is the fast & powerful solution for managing PDF and other document formats." is the site's headline, unaltered. "Fast" and "powerful" are adjectives without a measurement, and the page offers none. This is the third Artifex property verified in this campaign and the fourth scan of the same vendor's material: Ghostscript's licensing page and headline, MuPDF's licence page, and MuPDF.js's README and FAQ. Read together they show a vendor whose licensing documentation is precise and whose product headlines are not — which is a pattern worth having in the index rather than four unrelated impressions.

    Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://mupdf.com/
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    a886bc54f5704a39fe00a09617a1a0fa8c724602fdeb40b63566c55ec7c76ea8

    How we checked: Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://mupdf.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-mupdf-com-8eb78c36.txt.

    What this hash proves, and what it does not

  • “MuPDF is licensed under the GNU AGPL.”

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

    Confirmed verbatim: the licence page says "MuPDF is licensed under the GNU AGPL." The page is short and unusually direct about the consequences, which are worth recording beside the claim: the AGPL "imposes many conditions on users, including the need to release the full source code for systems built with it", and a commercial licence is offered for "those users that cannot (or do not want to) comply". So the claim understates rather than overstates the obligation, which is the opposite of the usual direction of error in this index. 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://mupdf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/license.html
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    b9e281570330ed43ffd97133560f538df4fc3e394c1d1a2561e77545f9cccd8e

    How we checked: Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://mupdf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/license.html 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-mupdf-readthedocs-io-en-latest-license-html-8b9a38ad.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.

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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 16 October 2026.
Behaviour testing.
We ran this ourselves. The file handling was watched directly.

Sources: mupdf.com (home, releases); mupdf.readthedocs.io (what-is-mupdf, mutool, mutool-clean, mutool-sign, license, changes). Licence confirmed on the licence page and the releases page.