Skip to content
dialegein

Pdftools SDK

Commercial SDK for PDF/A conversion, validation, compression and signing at volume.

Jobs Convert Compress Sign

Operated by PDF Tools AG, Steinstrasse 21, 8003 Zurich, Switzerland

Visit Pdftools SDK

Opens the vendor's own site.

Jobs covered

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

Convert Browse all convert tools

converting documents with Pdftools SDK, where the current guides document image-to-PDF conversion, image-to-PDF/A conversion with PDF/A-1b, PDF/A-1a, PDF/A-2b, PDF/A-2u, PDF/A-2a, PDF/A-3b, PDF/A-3u and PDF/A-3a conformance, PDF-to-image conversion using the Viewing, Archive and Fax profiles, PDF-to-PDF/A archival with the Archive profile, and PDF/A and other standards validation. The conversion-profile documentation says profiles define how an input file is converted and rendered into an output file, with raster JPEG or PNG output and adjustable parameters.

The scope records those documented image/PDF/A/PDF-to-image directions and conformance profiles, and makes no generic Office conversion, OCR or fidelity guarantee

Compress Browse all compress tools

compressing and optimising PDFs with Pdftools SDK, where the guides document Optimize with document profiles for web, archive and print, image recompression options, mixed raster content profiles, and removal options such as redundant graphics state save and restore pairs in 1.21. The scope records the documented Optimize profiles, image recompression and MRC settings, notes that optimisation can alter images and depends on the selected settings, and makes no percentage, size-reduction or lossless guarantee

Sign Browse all sign tools

signing PDFs with Pdftools SDK, where the signing guides document applying a document approval signature with a PFX or P12 certificate through the built-in cryptographic provider or another supported provider, certifying a PDF, adding a document timestamp, creating a signature visual appearance, validating signatures, configuring a timestamp authority, embedding long-term validation information, and using the SDK's signature-validation and certificate/trust-chain APIs.

The scope records the documented certificate-backed signing, certification, timestamp, LTV and validation path, and makes no claim that a certificate authority is supplied, no universal trust-chain guarantee, no trusted-timestamp guarantee and no independent legal-validity guarantee; visual appearance is a separate optional step

Where your files are processed

No server involved

An SDK that runs inside your own application. The vendor's own wording is "deploy on-premise, in the cloud, or hybrid", where cloud means the customer's cloud rather than theirs. The same company also sells a separate Conversion Service, and the documentation offers that for self-hosted, on-premises and cloud deployment on Windows, Linux and Docker, so it is not a vendor-hosted-only product: a REST API is an interface rather than evidence that the vendor processes the files. 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.

It is an embedded SDK, so it runs inside the application that links it. The vendor also sells a separate Conversion Service, and that service is offered for self-hosted, on-premises and cloud deployment on Windows, Linux and Docker rather than being vendor-hosted only: a REST API is an interface, not evidence that the vendor processes the files.

SDK deployment and service deployment are separate decisions, and where documents go is determined by the deployment rather than by the shared boilerplate.

What it does

Pdftools SDK is a commercial in-process PDF library for developers, provided by PDF Tools AG, Steinstrasse 21, 8003 Zurich, Switzerland. The current release is Pdftools SDK 1.21.0, dated 13 October 2026; the release line also includes 1.20.1 (12 August 2026) and 1.20.0 (23 July 2026), and older versioned documentation remains available.

The SDK is a native library with bindings for C, C#, Java and Python, and Go support through the other-languages interface; the current technical-specification table does not list a separate C++ binding. It supports Windows x86/x64, macOS x64 and ARM64, and Linux x64 on glibc 2.17+ and 2.34+ distributions; release notes separately record native Windows ARM64 and Linux ARM64 support added in earlier releases.

It converts images to PDF and PDF/A, converts PDF to images through Viewing, Archive and Fax profiles, archives to PDF/A, compresses and optimises with image recompression and MRC profiles, merges and splits, signs and certifies with certificate-backed signatures, validates signatures, and can use a separate Pdftools OCR Service for OCR. It is designed for on-premises, private-cloud or hybrid deployment and is not a hosted conversion API.

The site says Pdftools is joining Apryse; the legal provider remains PDF Tools AG.

Best for

Enterprise document pipelines where PDF/A compliance and validation matter, and teams whose existing stack is in C or a language without good PDF tooling, since the C API is genuinely a first-class binding rather than an afterthought. It is also a reasonable choice where deployment has to stay on your own infrastructure for regulatory reasons.

Worth knowing

The live release notes now show Pdftools SDK 1.21.0 (13 October 2026), not 1.20.1, which is the previous release. The legal provider is PDF Tools AG, Steinstrasse 21, 8003 Zurich, Switzerland, per the imprint and licence agreement.

The site banner says Pdftools is joining Apryse; that is a prospective corporate/brand transition in the vendor's own wording, and this record keeps PDF Tools AG as the documented provider rather than silently replacing it. The SDK is priced per page and quote-based; no numeric rate is published, so priceFromGbp is null and priceBasis is unknown, with no currency conversion.

The SDK can be used without a licence key only with watermarked results, and trial output is also watermarked; page-credit licensing uses two credits for PDF/A archival and one for the other operations. The licensing service URL and Licensing Gateway are licence-checking paths and are not evidence that document contents are uploaded or processed by Pdftools.

The current technical-specification table lists C, C#, Java and Python bindings plus Go through the other-languages interface; it does not list a separate C++ binding. Windows is listed as x86/x64, macOS as x64/ARM64 and Linux as x64 with glibc requirements; release notes separately record Windows ARM64 and Linux ARM64 support added in earlier releases, so the platform table and the release notes are not identical.

OCR requires a separate Pdftools OCR Service instance and the service performs the actual character recognition; no OCR accuracy guarantee is made, and OCR is not one of this record's jobs. Conversion covers image-to-PDF and PDF/A, PDF-to-image profiles, PDF/A archival and conformance validation; it is not a generic Office converter and carries no fidelity guarantee.

Compression covers Optimize profiles, image recompression and MRC; no percentage, size-reduction or lossless guarantee is made. Signing is certificate-backed through PFX/P12 or the built-in cryptographic provider, with certification, timestamps, LTV information and signature validation; no certificate authority is supplied, and no trust-chain, timestamp or legal-validity guarantee is made.

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 · Linux · macOS · Self-hosted
Website
pdf-tools.com
Requires an account
Not applicable
Free tier
Not verified
Watermark on the free tier
Not verified
Maximum file size
Not verified
Batch processing
Yes
Data residency
Self-hosted
Open source
No
Self-hostable
Yes
Licence
Commercial, per-page and quote-based.

Commercial, per-page and quote-based. PDF Tools AG, Steinstrasse 21, 8003 Zurich, Switzerland, is the legal provider named in the imprint and licence agreement.

The current pricing page says the SDK is priced per page, by product, with per-page rates that decrease at higher volumes and a quote tailored to the pipeline; no numeric rate or public price is published. The SDK can be used without a licence key only with watermarked results, and a trial licence also produces watermarked output; a full licence removes the watermark.

Page-credit licensing charges one credit per page operation, with PDF/A archival charged at two credits per operation and other operations at one. The licensing page describes a default licensing service URL and an optional Licensing Gateway for offline or proxied operation; that is a licence-checking path, not a document-processing endpoint.

The site banner says Pdftools is joining Apryse, which is recorded as a prospective brand/corporate transition; it is not used to replace PDF Tools AG as the documented provider. The provider's commercial licence is separate from third-party and native libraries and from the separate Conversion Service, OCR Service, Toolbox add-on and Viewer SDK.

Redaction
Not determined
Programmatic access
Embeddable library
Last availability check
Responded in 462 ms 21 October 2026

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

Why we have not determined this

What that does not establish

RECORDED AS UNVERIFIED, AND THE REASON IS SPECIFIC. The vendor makes an unusually strong redaction claim elsewhere on this site - "Redaction That Can't Be Undone", building "a new PDF without sensitive information" with "no residual data" - and that page attributes the manual redaction path to the PDF Viewer rather than to this SDK.

This SDK's own page describes conversion, PDF/A creation and validation, compression and signing, and does not mention redaction at all. Recording `removes_content` here would be taking a family brochure for a product page, which is the mistake this index made with Foxit's desktop editor and the SDK.

What would settle it: the API reference for this SDK, or a canary test through it.

https://www.pdf-tools.com/products/conversion/pdf-tools-sdk/

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.

  • “Build large-scale document processing solutions for fast and accurate outputs: PDF/A conversion, compression, signing, and more. Deploy on-premise, in the cloud, or hybrid.”

    Checked by us - the source says this Read 1 October 2026

    Confirmed. The quoted text appears in the rendered page as read on 2026-10-01.

    This claim was carried as reported rather than checked until this read.

    Standing: Not re-read against the live source

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://www.pdf-tools.com/products/conversion/pdf-tools-sdk/
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    62f1dfad62a3eeb5f6ace9355df41c339efb93e2ba5c77ab751fc60f61723018

    How we checked

    Read as rendered text in headless Chrome on 2026-10-01 and saved to the evidence archive, so the read can be repeated against the same file. Comparison ignores case, punctuation and hyphenation, which is why "open-source" on the record matches "open source" on the page.

    What this hash proves, and what it does not

  • “The Pdftools PDF SDK validates compliance with important PDF standards, such as PDF/A for archiving.”

    Checked by us - the source says this Read 1 October 2026

    Confirmed. The quoted text appears in the rendered page as read on 2026-10-01.

    This claim was carried as reported rather than checked until this read.

    Standing: Not re-read against the live source

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://www.pdf-tools.com/products/conversion/pdf-tools-sdk/
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    62f1dfad62a3eeb5f6ace9355df41c339efb93e2ba5c77ab751fc60f61723018

    How we checked

    Read as rendered text in headless Chrome on 2026-10-01 and saved to the evidence archive, so the read can be repeated against the same file. Comparison ignores case, punctuation and hyphenation, which is why "open-source" on the record matches "open source" on the page.

    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 Pdftools SDK 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 1 October 2026 and 1 October 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: pdf-tools.com: the home page, the Pdftools SDK product page and the true-redaction feature page, read 2026-09-22 with headless Chrome. Vendor documentation, not independently tested; the SDK was not downloaded and no document was converted.