Best Self Hosted Alternatives to Zamzar

Stirling PDF is an open-source PDF platform for editing, converting, and automating PDF workflows through a web interface and a private REST API. It provides a broad toolkit for common PDF operations while keeping documents within your own environment.

Key Features

• 50+ PDF tools including merge, split, compress, convert, and manipulate PDFs
• OCR, redaction, and signing tools for document processing workflows
• Browser-based UI plus server deployment with API access for integrations
• Automation and reusable workflows/pipelines to batch process documents
• Enterprise-oriented capabilities such as SSO and auditing (availability may depend on edition)
• Multi-language interface (40+ languages)

Use Cases

• Internal PDF processing service for teams that cannot use third-party SaaS tools
• Automating high-volume document conversions and transformations via REST API
• Standardizing repeatable PDF workflows (e.g., OCR + compress + redact) for operations

Limitations and Considerations

• The project is open-core; some enterprise features and offerings may require a paid plan

Stirling PDF fits individuals through enterprises needing a configurable PDF toolkit with both a UI and API. It is especially useful when privacy, compliance, or on-prem processing requirements prevent sending documents to external services.

ConvertX is a self-hosted, browser-based file conversion service that lets you upload files and convert them into many other formats. It provides an easy web UI while orchestrating multiple underlying converter tools for broad format coverage.

Key Features

• Supports 1000+ conversion formats across documents, images, audio/video, ebooks, data files, and 3D assets
• Batch processing to convert multiple files in one session
• User accounts with optional registration control
• Optional password protection and JWT-based authentication
• Configurable conversion behavior, including FFmpeg input/output arguments and concurrency limits
• Automatic deletion of older files on a configurable schedule

Use Cases

• Internal tool for teams to convert office documents, media, and images without using third-party services
• Media workflow utility for transcoding and rewrapping audio/video formats via FFmpeg
• Converting ebooks and document formats (for example, EPUB/PDF/ODT/DOCX) for archiving and portability

Limitations and Considerations

• Actual format support depends on the bundled converter tools available in the deployment image and their capabilities
• Resource usage can be significant for large media conversions; concurrency limits and FFmpeg settings may be needed

ConvertX is well-suited for individuals and organizations that need broad file format conversion in a simple web app. It combines a modern TypeScript-based server with proven conversion utilities to cover a wide range of real-world conversion tasks.

Gotenberg is a developer-friendly, containerized HTTP API for converting many document formats into PDF and performing related PDF operations. It wraps proven conversion engines so you can run consistent document generation in any environment without installing complex dependencies.

Key Features

• HTML and URL to PDF rendering via Chromium
• Office document conversion (e.g., Word, Excel) to PDF via LibreOffice
• Modular architecture with configurable modules and routes
• Container-first distribution for reproducible deployments
• PDF workflows such as conversion and merging
• Asynchronous processing via webhooks, with configurable headers and HTTP methods

Use Cases

• Generate invoices, reports, and other PDFs from HTML templates in backend services
• Convert user-uploaded Office documents to PDFs in a microservice pipeline
• Automated document generation/processing with webhook-based delivery to storage or downstream systems

Limitations and Considerations

• Conversion fidelity depends on underlying engines (Chromium/LibreOffice) and document complexity
• Rendering and conversion can be resource-intensive; capacity planning is important for high throughput

Gotenberg fits well as a stateless document conversion microservice in container-based stacks. Its API-driven approach and modular design make it practical for both simple PDF generation and more automated, asynchronous document workflows.

Thumbor is an open-source smart imaging service that dynamically generates derived images (thumbnails and transformations) from a source image. It runs as an HTTP server where transformations are defined through URL parameters, enabling consistent image handling across applications.

Key Features

• On-demand cropping, resizing, flipping, and transformation via URL-based HTTP requests
• Smart cropping using face/feature detection for improved focal-point selection
• Filter pipeline with chainable effects (for example brightness, contrast, grayscale, blur)
• Multiple loaders and storages to fetch and persist images (including file, HTTP, Redis, and MongoDB)
• Caching support to improve performance for repeated requests
• Extensible architecture for custom filters, loaders, storages, and processing engines
• Automatic delivery of WebP where supported to reduce bandwidth and improve page performance

Use Cases

• Centralized thumbnailing and responsive image generation for websites and mobile apps
• Optimizing and converting images (for example serving WebP) to reduce page load times
• Building an image transformation API decoupled from application code and storage backends

Thumbor is a practical choice when you need a dedicated, configurable image processing backend with smart cropping and a flexible plugin ecosystem. It helps teams avoid pre-generating many image sizes while keeping image delivery fast and consistent.

imgproxy is a standalone HTTP image processing server that resizes, transforms, optimizes, and converts images on the fly. It fetches source images (typically by URL), applies requested transformations, and returns the resulting image, offloading image processing from your application.

Key Features

• URL-based image transformations (resize, crop, rotate, and more)
• Image optimization features such as metadata and color profile stripping
• Supports multiple formats including JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP, AVIF, and JPEG XL
• Watermarking and filters for common presentation needs
• Security controls such as signed URLs, source restrictions, and size/dimension limits to mitigate abuse and “image bomb” attacks
• Designed for high performance using libvips

Use Cases

• Delivering responsive images and thumbnails for web apps without pre-generating variants
• Converting and optimizing images to modern formats to improve page performance
• Centralizing image transformation logic behind a CDN or reverse proxy

Limitations and Considerations

• Typically deployed behind a CDN, load balancer, or reverse proxy for HTTPS termination and caching
• Some advanced capabilities are available only in the separate Pro edition

imgproxy fits well when you want predictable, controlled image processing on your own infrastructure while keeping application code simple. It is especially useful for high-traffic sites that need fast, secure, on-demand image transformations.

BentoPDF is a self-hostable PDF toolkit that runs entirely in the browser, enabling PDF editing, organization, conversion, and processing without uploading files to a server. It is designed for privacy-sensitive workflows where documents must remain on the user’s device.

Key Features

• 100% client-side PDF processing for strong privacy (no server-side file handling required)
• Large collection of PDF tools, including merge, split, rotate, extract, and page organization
• In-browser PDF editor with annotations, highlights, comments, shapes, images, and search
• Redaction tools for permanently removing sensitive content
• Form workflows including creating fillable forms and filling forms (including XFA support)
• Utilities such as watermarking, headers/footers, page numbers, metadata viewing, and PDF comparison
• Optional image-processing capabilities (e.g., deskewing) using OpenCV

Use Cases

• Internal self-hosted PDF utilities for teams handling confidential documents
• Browser-based PDF editing and redaction for compliance-oriented environments
• Converting and preparing documents (splitting, merging, watermarking) without file uploads

Limitations and Considerations

• Performance depends on the user’s browser and device resources, especially for very large PDFs
• Some advanced PDF operations may vary in fidelity depending on source document complexity

BentoPDF provides a comprehensive set of PDF tools while keeping document processing local to the user’s device. It is well-suited for organizations and individuals who want modern PDF workflows without relying on third-party cloud processing.

OmniTools is a self-hosted web application that bundles many everyday utilities into a single, fast web interface. It focuses on privacy by processing files and data entirely in the browser, so content does not need to be uploaded to a server.

Key Features

• Broad toolbox covering images, video/audio, PDFs, text/lists, date & time, math, and data formats
• Client-side processing for tools (privacy-friendly handling of files and content)
• Web-based UI accessible from any modern browser
• Includes common data utilities for formats such as JSON, CSV, and XML
• Docker-friendly deployment for lightweight hosting

Use Cases

• Quick PDF tasks such as splitting, merging, or basic editing
• Converting or resizing images and performing lightweight media edits in the browser
• Developer and productivity utilities for formatting text, and manipulating JSON/CSV/XML

OmniTools is a practical “Swiss army knife” style web app for teams or individuals who want a private, ad-free utilities page. It is especially useful when you want convenient tools with minimal infrastructure and client-side data handling.

MAZANOKE is a simple, privacy-focused image optimizer that runs entirely in your browser. It compresses and converts images locally on your device, can work offline, and is designed as a safer alternative to online “free” image tools.

Key Features

• In-browser image optimization with adjustable quality
• Target file size compression option
• Resize controls with max width/height limits
• Clipboard paste support for quick imports
• Format conversion to and between JPG, PNG, WebP, and ICO
• Import support for HEIC, AVIF, TIFF, GIF, and SVG (with configurable output defaults)
• EXIF metadata removal to reduce privacy leaks (e.g., location/date)
• Installable as a web app (PWA-style) for offline use

Use Cases

• Compress photos before sending via email or chat without uploading to third parties
• Convert mixed image formats (e.g., HEIC/AVIF) into more compatible formats
• Remove EXIF metadata before publishing images online

MAZANOKE is well-suited for individuals, families, and small teams who want fast, private image optimization with a lightweight, shareable self-hosted setup.

Flyimg is a Dockerized image transformation service that fetches images from local or remote sources, applies resizing and cropping operations, converts to modern formats, and serves optimized outputs. It is designed to provide a Cloudinary-like workflow using URL-based transformation parameters and built-in caching.

Key Features

• URL-based transformations (resize, crop, quality/compression and output format options)
• Automatic format negotiation via the client Accept header (for example AVIF/WebP)
• Output support for AVIF, WebP, MozJPEG, PNG, GIF, and optional JPEG XL via ImageMagick
• Fetches source images from external URLs or local paths
• Caching of transformed results for faster repeat requests
• Containerized deployment with Nginx and PHP-FPM

Use Cases

• Image optimization layer for websites, CMSs, and e-commerce catalogs
• Replacing or complementing third-party image CDNs with a self-managed service
• Generating responsive image variants and modern formats for performance

Limitations and Considerations

• Performance and output quality depend on ImageMagick and selected encoders available in the container
• Remote fetching requires careful access controls to avoid misuse (for example, unwanted internal network access)

Flyimg fits teams that want a simple, URL-driven image pipeline with modern formats and caching, while keeping deployment and operations straightforward through Docker. It is especially useful when you need consistent image transformations across multiple applications and environments.

File Wizard is a browser-based utility for converting files, running OCR on PDFs/images, and transcribing audio. It provides a simple web UI that orchestrates common command-line tools and local ML models, with job tracking and a persistent history.

Key Features

• Convert between many document, image, audio, and video formats by wrapping external tools (configurable via a YAML settings file)
• OCR for PDFs and images using Tesseract and OCRmyPDF, including generating searchable PDFs
• Audio transcription using local Whisper models (faster-whisper), with subtitle-style outputs supported by Whisper tooling
• Drag-and-drop web interface with responsive dark UI
• Background job processing with real-time status updates and stored job history
• Optional OAuth/OIDC-based access control configuration (can run without auth in local-only mode)
• Optional CUDA-enabled container image for GPU-accelerated transcription

Use Cases

• Convert office documents and ebooks into consistent archival formats (PDF, EPUB, DOCX)
• Turn scanned PDFs into searchable documents with OCR
• Create transcripts/subtitles from meeting recordings and other audio files

Limitations and Considerations

• Not safe to expose publicly without strong authentication and isolation; wrapping converters can introduce arbitrary command execution risk if misconfigured
• Conversion fidelity and supported formats depend on the installed external tools and their build options
• Transcription performance varies significantly by model size and whether GPU acceleration is available

File Wizard fits well for homelabs and internal teams that want a single, lightweight web interface to run conversions, OCR workflows, and local speech-to-text processing. Its tool-based architecture makes it extensible, but it should be deployed with careful security controls when used beyond local environments.

Webarchive is a lightweight, Go-based web archiving service designed for personal or home-network use. It exposes a REST API and optional web UI to capture and store web pages in multiple formats for offline access and evidence preservation.

Key Features

• Save pages in multiple formats: PDF, captured HTTP headers, and single-file HTML with embedded resources
• REST API for adding pages, listing archives, retrieving page metadata, and downloading stored files
• Built-in basic web UI (configurable via environment variables) and Docker Compose support for easy deployment
• Configurable via environment variables (DB path, API address, UI options, PDF rendering settings)
• PDF generation via an external wkhtmltopdf binary with configurable viewport, DPI, and print/media options
• Local file storage with per-page result IDs and simple file retrieval endpoints

Use Cases

• Personal archival of articles, issue threads, or documentation for offline reading and long-term reference
• Creating PDF snapshots of web pages for records, reporting, or legal evidence
• Capturing HTTP response headers and a single-file HTML version for debugging, change tracking, or lightweight backups

Limitations and Considerations

• PDF export requires an external wkhtmltopdf binary available in PATH; PDF fidelity depends on that tool
• No built-in authentication or multi-user controls; access control and multi-tenant use are not implemented yet
• UI is minimal (single basic theme) and feature set is intentionally simple; advanced browsing/search features are limited
• Storage backends are basic/local by default; SQL-backed or multi-storage options are listed as roadmap items and not yet available

Webarchive is suited for users who need a compact, API-driven archiver they can run locally. It focuses on reliability and simplicity rather than advanced multi-user features or full enterprise workflows.