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Paperless-ngx

Community-supported open-source system that scans, OCRs, indexes and archives your documents.

Try Paperless-ngx (opens the Paperless-ngx website in a new tab)

Our verdict

Good for people who want to turn paper and PDFs into a searchable archive on their own server. Skip it if you want a hosted service or do not want to maintain one.

What it does well

  • OCR with Tesseract for more than 100 languages; stores PDF/A alongside originals
  • Tags, correspondents, document types and full-text search with auto-complete
  • Multi-user permissions, email import, workflows; data stays on your server

Where it falls short

  • Self-hosted: you install, update and back it up yourself
  • README warns to never run it on an untrusted host: data is stored unencrypted
  • Optional AI features are opt-in and disabled by default

Paperless-ngx is a community-supported, open-source document management system that turns physical documents into a searchable online archive. It performs OCR using the open-source Tesseract engine (more than 100 languages), saves PDF/A copies alongside the unaltered originals, and uses machine learning to suggest tags, correspondents and document types.

It has a web app with filtering, bulk editing, saved views, custom fields, full-text search, email import (via Apache Tika for Office files and email), multi-user permissions and workflows. Optional features include remote OCR with Azure AI and LLM-based suggestions and chat; both are opt-in.

Paperless-ngx has no price or plans: it is GPL-3.0 licensed and you run it yourself. The README says the easiest way to deploy it is docker compose and offers an install script for that. Project documentation says data is stored locally on your server.

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Last updated 17 October 2026. Facts checked against the official site on 16 October 2026. How we make money