No. 18 of 37 ·PDF Compression Software

pdf-cli

Windows · Mac · Linux

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Freedom report

Two barsScore 5.5

Free tierNo free tier on record
Open codeNo open-source code on record
Runs widely3 of 6 device platforms
DocumentedPlans, terms and facts published

pdf-cli is ranked #18 of 37 in PDF compression software on Freedom251. It runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.

Compared on PDF compression software

Batch compression: Yes
Offline desktop app: No
Supported platforms: Linux, macOS, Windows

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The record

Purpose: pdf-cli is a command-line tool for everyday PDF operations, including merging, splitting, compressing, encrypting, and manipulating PDFs.
Single binary: The project describes pdf-cli as a fast single binary with no external dependencies and parallel processing for large operations.
PDF operations: Commands include extracting and reordering pages, rotating files, editing metadata, adding watermarks, and creating PDFs from images.
OCR: Text extraction supports OCR for scanned PDFs using native Tesseract when installed or a built-in WASM fallback.
Automation: The CLI supports batch processing, JSON/CSV/TSV output, and stdin/stdout pipelines.
Password handling: Encrypted PDFs can be handled with an interactive prompt, a password file, or the PDF_CLI_PASSWORD environment variable; the --password flag requires an insecure-use opt-in.
Platforms: Prebuilt binaries are listed for Linux amd64 and arm64, macOS amd64 and arm64, and Windows amd64.
Installation: The README recommends installation with Go 1.25 or later and also documents prebuilt releases and building from source.
Integrations: The README lists pdfcpu, ledongthuc/pdf, gogosseract, progressbar, cobra, and yaml.v3 as project dependencies.
PDF/A limits: The project says its PDF/A validation and optimization are basic and do not provide full ISO 19005 compliance; color-profile validation is unsupported.
License: The project is licensed under the MIT License.
Intended users: The README describes the tool as suitable for automation and batch processing, and says it works without a GUI.

Where it ranks on Freedom251

Best PDF Compression Software in 2026#18 of 37

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Sources

github.com/lgbarn/pdf-cli· checked 4 Oct 2026