pypdfium2
Python bindings to PDFium
Decision gist · record as of 2026-08-14
Yes. pypdfium2 is production-stable, actively maintained, permissively licensed, and covers a broad range of platforms with pre-built binaries. It has no mandatory runtime dependencies and zero known vulnerabilities. Install it if you need PDF rendering, inspection, or manipulation in Python; the medium install friction is offset by comprehensive platform support.AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying
Before you install
- Requires Python 3.6 or later.
- PDFium binaries are bundled with wheels on supported platforms; unsupported platforms may require system PDFium or source build with gcc/clang and git.
- Medium install friction due to platform-specific binary wheels.
License · maintenance · safety
permissive license (permissive) — Licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Apache-2.0 with permissive treatment, allowing use in both open-source and proprietary projects without significant restrictions.
last release 2026-08-13 (1 days) · last repo commit 2026-08-13 · 807 stars
0 known vulnerabilities (OSV.dev, 2026-08-14) · 76,887,653 downloads/mo, #443 on PyPI
Alternatives
Verify before relying
pip install -U pypdfium2
import pypdfium2 as pdfium
pdf = pdfium.PdfDocument.new()
page = pdf.new_page()
pdf.save('output.pdf')- Whether the raw ctypes API surface is documented or requires reading PDFium's C headers directly
- Performance characteristics when processing large PDFs or batch operations
- Whether XFA/JavaScript support (via V8 builds) is stable or experimental
What it is and what it does
pypdfium2 wraps Google's PDFium library—a mature, permissively-licensed PDF engine—and exposes it to Python through ctypes bindings generated by ctypesgen. It provides both high-level helpers for common tasks (rendering pages to images, extracting text, creating PDFs) and direct access to the underlying PDFium C API for advanced use cases.
The package ships with pre-built binaries for many platforms (Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, and others), making installation straightforward on supported systems. It has no mandatory runtime dependencies, though optional packages like Pillow and NumPy unlock convenience adapters for image handling. The project is actively maintained, with documentation and examples available.
Use it for
- Render PDF pages to images or bitmap buffers for display or further processing
- Extract text, metadata, or structured data from existing PDF documents
- Programmatically create or modify PDF documents with text, images, and annotations
- Batch process PDFs in server or automation workflows without external tools
- Inspect PDF structure, page counts, and properties for validation or analysis
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page. Verify before relying on it.
Yes.
pypdfium2 is production-stable, actively maintained, permissively licensed, and covers a broad range of platforms with pre-built binaries. It has no mandatory runtime dependencies and zero known vulnerabilities. Install it if you need PDF rendering, inspection, or manipulation in Python; the medium install friction is offset by comprehensive platform support.
Install
pypdfium2 on PyPI
Before you install
Medium install friction due to platform-specific binary wheels. The package is actively maintained with a release within the last day and covers a wide range of platforms with pre-built wheels. No mandatory runtime dependencies, though optional packages unlock additional functionality.
Requires Python 3.6 or later. PDFium binaries are bundled with wheels on supported platforms; unsupported platforms may require system PDFium or source build with gcc/clang and git.
License in practice
Licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Apache-2.0 with permissive treatment, allowing use in both open-source and proprietary projects without significant restrictions.
Quickstart
pip install -U pypdfium2
import pypdfium2 as pdfium
pdf = pdfium.PdfDocument.new()
page = pdf.new_page()
pdf.save('output.pdf')Verify before relying
- Whether the raw ctypes API surface is documented or requires reading PDFium's C headers directly
- Performance characteristics when processing large PDFs or batch operations
- Whether XFA/JavaScript support (via V8 builds) is stable or experimental
Package facts
| License | permissive license permissive |
| Python support | Supports the current Python release >=3.6 |
| Install friction | Medium. Platform-specific wheel |
| Runtime dependencies | None |
| Maintenance | Actively maintained 1 days since the last release |
| Last repo commit | |
| First released | |
| Downloads | 76,887,653 / month, #443 on PyPI 30-day window, as of 2026-08-14 |
| Known vulnerabilities | None known OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-14 |
| Classifiers | Development Status :: 5 - Production/StableIntended Audience :: DevelopersIntended Audience :: Information TechnologyProgramming Language :: Python :: 3Programming Language :: Python :: 3 :: OnlyProgramming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: CPythonTopic :: Multimedia :: GraphicsTopic :: Software Development :: Libraries |
Evidence: pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-android_23_arm64_v8a.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-android_23_armeabi_v7a.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-macosx_13_0_arm64.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-macosx_13_0_x86_64.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-manylinux_2_17_aarch64.manylinux2014_aarch64.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-manylinux_2_17_armv7l.manylinux2014_armv7l.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-manylinux_2_17_i686.manylinux2014_i686.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-manylinux_2_17_ppc64le.manylinux2014_ppc64le.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-manylinux_2_27_s390x.manylinux_2_28_s390x.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-manylinux_2_34_riscv64.manylinux_2_39_riscv64.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-musllinux_1_2_aarch64.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-musllinux_1_2_armv7l.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-musllinux_1_2_i686.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-musllinux_1_2_ppc64le.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-musllinux_1_2_riscv64.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-musllinux_1_2_s390x.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-musllinux_1_2_x86_64.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-win32.whl; pypdfium2-5.13.0-py3-none-win_amd64.whl
Tags
Let your AI agent find packages like this
Example. Real query, live index.
You found this page by searching. An agent finds it by wishing: SkillFed indexes 14,416 PyPI packages by what they can do, searchable in plain language.
wish › “pdf rendering python”
- pypdfium2pypdfium2 is a Python binding to PDFium that enables PDF rendering,…
- weasyprintWeasyPrint converts HTML and CSS into PDF documents using a…
- PyMuPDFbPyMuPDFb provides the compiled MuPDF C engine binaries that power…
Give your agent the search over MCP, or paste the wish link into any chat.
More Libraries packages
urllib3 is an HTTP client library that provides thread-safe connection pooling, SSL/TLS verification, multipart file uploads, request retries, compression support, and proxy handling for Python applications.
Requests is a Python HTTP library that simplifies sending HTTP/1.1 requests with automatic handling of headers, authentication, cookies, and response parsing.
Pluggy provides a plugin system that lets you define hook specifications and register implementations to be called in sequence, enabling extensible Python applications without tight coupling.
Install it if you're building an extensible application or framework.
Provides parsing, arithmetic, and recurrence rule computation for dates and times, with timezone support and iCalendar RFC compliance.
Install it if you need to parse flexible date strings, compute relative dates, handle timezones, or work with recurrence rules—it's the de facto choice for these tasks.
Six provides utility functions to write Python code that runs on both Python 2.7 and Python 3.3+, smoothing over language differences between the two versions.
pytest is a testing framework that lets you write test functions using plain assert statements and automatically discovers and runs them, with detailed failure reporting.
See also pdftext · unPDF · pikepdf · camelot-py · pdf-oxide · fpdf · freetype-py · ghostscript · rlPyCairo · PyPDF3