iText Core/Community is a high-performance, battle-tested library that allows you to create, adapt, inspect and maintain PDF documents, allowing you to add PDF functionality to your software projects with ease. It is also available for .NET (C#).

• Core library:
  • PDF creation with the use of our layout engine
  • PDF manipulation, e.g. merging multiple PDFs into one, adding new content, ...
  • PDF digital signing
  • PDF form creation and manipulation
  • Working with PDF/A documents
  • Working with PDF/UA documents
  • FIPS-compliant cryptography
  • Barcode generation
  • SVG support
• Addons:
  • Converting XML/HTML & CSS to PDF repo, info
  • Redacting sensitive information in PDF documents repo, info
  • Support for international character sets (e.g. Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Thai, ...) info
  • Optimize PDF documents for reduced file size, and increased performance info
  • Flattening XFA documents info
  • PDF debugging repo, info

Want to discover what's possible? Head over to our Demo Lab! It contains a collection of demo applications ready to use online!

The easiest way to get started is to use Maven, just add the following entries to your pom.xml file:

<properties>
  <itext.version>REPLACE_WITH_DESIRED_ITEXT_VERSION</itext.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>com.itextpdf</groupId>
    <artifactId>itext-core</artifactId>
    <version>${itext.version}</version>
    <type>pom</type>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>com.itextpdf</groupId>
    <artifactId>bouncy-castle-adapter</artifactId>
    <version>${itext.version}</version>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

For more advanced use cases, please refer to the Installation guidelines. You can also build iText Community from source.

The following example shows how easy it is to create a simple PDF document:

package com.itextpdf.hellopdf;

import com.itextpdf.kernel.pdf.PdfDocument;
import com.itextpdf.kernel.pdf.PdfWriter;
import com.itextpdf.layout.Document;
import com.itextpdf.layout.element.Paragraph;

import java.io.FileNotFoundException;

public class HelloPdfApp {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws FileNotFoundException {
      try (Document document = new Document(new PdfDocument(new PdfWriter("./hello-pdf.pdf")))) {
            document.add(new Paragraph("Hello PDF!"));
        }
    }
}

Starting from version 8.0.3 iText Core supports native image compilation using GraalVM. See building for details.

This is a small subset of examples to get you started. For more advanced examples, refer to our Knowledge Base or the following links: Examples repo, Signing examples.

Some of the output PDF files will be incorrectly displayed by the previewer, so be sure to download them to see the correct results.

Check out the iText Knowledge Base for the iText Jump-start tutorial and other tutorials, FAQs and more. For specific information and examples relating to digital signatures and iText, make sure to check the Digital Signatures Hub.

Many common questions have already been answered on Stack Overflow, so make sure to also check there.

Many people have contributed to iText Core/Community over the years. If you've found a bug, a mistake in documentation, or have a hot new feature you want to implement, we welcome your contributions.

Small changes or fixes can be submitted as a Pull Request, while for major changes we request you contact us at [email protected] so we can better coordinate our efforts and prevent duplication of work.

Please read our Contribution Guidelines for details on code submissions, coding rules, and more.

iText is dual licensed as AGPL/Commercial software.

AGPL is a free/open-source software license, however, this doesn't mean the software is gratis!

The AGPL is a copyleft license, which means that any derivative work must also be licensed under the same terms. If you’re using iText in software or a service which cannot comply with the AGPL terms, we have a commercial license available that exempts you from such obligations.

Contact Sales for more info.