Mozilla PDF.js vs Papers
Mozilla PDF.js
mozilla.github.ioPapers
apps.gnome.orgSide by side
| Figure | Mozilla PDF.js | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · PDF Readers | 8.3 (#8) | 7.2 (#20) |
| Annotations | PDF.js renders annotations for viewing and supports adding a subset of annotation types. | Free text annotations are printed by default in version 51.0. |
| License | PDF.js is licensed under Apache 2.0, and its documentation is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5. | The app-specific content on the GNOME page is licensed GPL-2.0-or-later. |
| Purpose | PDF.js is a web standards-based platform for parsing and rendering PDF files. | Papers is a document viewer for the GNOME desktop that can view, search, and annotate documents. |
| Support | The project points users to GitHub issues for technical problems and its Matrix room for questions or guidance. | The app page directs users to its issue tracker to give feedback or report issues. |
Plans
In their own words
Mozilla PDF.js
Mozilla PDF.js is a free, web standards-based platform for parsing and rendering PDF files. Developers can use its display API to render documents and retrieve information, or adapt the viewer layer for a custom interface. That viewer is used in Firefox and project browser extensions. PDF.js renders annotations and supports adding a subset of annotation types, and it supports form filling; OCR is not provided. The project targets HTML5-compliant browsers and includes a legacy build for older browsers, although PDF feature support varies by browser and version. Prebuilt builds are available, with hosted copies listed through jsDelivr, cdnjs, and unpkg. Developers can clone and build it locally, but some browsers require a local web server instead of opening PDFs through file URLs. Cross-origin requests are blocked by default, so CORS or a server proxy may be needed. For large documents, rendering only visible pages can reduce memory use. PDF.js is licensed under Apache 2.0.