Readit NewsPseudoComputer commented on Got tired of bad PDF WebApp so we made a Free, Open-Sourced, Private Alternative luxpdf.com... · Posted by u/PseudoComputer
How does that compare to https://github.com/Stirling-Tools/Stirling-PDF ?
I think Stirling PDF is a great product, but there meant for more Enterprise level users. LuxPDF is meant for very quick file conversions or modifications and is geared towards freelancers, students, small business etc.
Oh thank you so much. These are common and very annoying pain points.
I really hope you enjoy it man
It's unfortunate I couldn't fit the full title "Free, Open-Sourced, Private, Unlimited PDF WebApp. No Registration. No paywalls. No Ads"
Thank you for building this.
The biggest pain in my opinion though is PDF editing, for example, filling annoying image based forms with predefined square boxes/spaces
Sounds good, we will start working on this soon. It's definitely a harder thing to develop, but that's the beauty of open source
Is it a competitor to tools like Sedja?
Yes, it's very similar except we are completely open-sourced and free. They do have unique features though, I'll give them that.
Alternative: Stirling PDF
I think the core audience for Stirling PDF is a lot different from ours. Stirling PDF looks like there built for enterprise users and big business. We built LuxPDF to be more for students, small business owners, freelancers, etc. To be honest we saw our site as an alternative to FreeConvert & PDFCandy, not for Stirling PDF.
Well done, hopefully gains traction. The alternative websites you talk about are an absolute nightmare to navigate only to find a suprise login or subscription.
Yes, and we hope that at worst case, someone uses our Repo as motivation to build a better version of LuxPDF if it fails.
I don't want this to sound like an accusation, but did you vibe-code this? The site's style is looking very similar to what you might get from Claude.
No it's a very valid question, yes we did use Kiro IDE running on Claude 4 for some of the more complicated tools like Sort Pages (getting the UI, image preview etc) and some other tools. Developing this PDF WebApp was a lot more complicated than we thought so we had to resort to vibe coding for some functionality. We used Claude mostly for the tools and the "initial generation"/layout of the site.
In case your first instinct (like mine) was to browse through the implementation, the javascript is at https://github.com/VSRemoter/LuxPDF/blob/main/script.js
Yes, I can't believe I didn't attach on the main site, will do this asap haha