PyMuPDF Library

PyMuPDF is a high-performance Python library for accessing and manipulating PDF, XPS, EPUB, MOBI, and CBZ documents. Originally developed by Artifex Software (the company behind MuPDF and Ghostscript) and maintained by Julian Smith and Jorj McKie, PyMuPDF has over 6,200 stars as of 2026. PyMuPDF is a Python binding for the MuPDF C library, providing fast, memory-efficient access to PDF and other document formats. Unlike pure Python PDF libraries that can be slow for large files, PyMuPDF leverages the optimized MuPDF C engine for near-native performance. Key features include: document access (opening PDF, XPS, EPUB, MOBI, CBZ, and FB2 documents with page navigation), text extraction (plain text, structured blocks, words, and characters with position, font, size, and color), page rendering (rasterizing pages to PNG, JPEG at configurable resolution with anti-aliasing), PDF manipulation (creating, merging, splitting, inserting, deleting, and rotating pages), annotation support (text notes, highlights, underlines, stamps, and file attachments), form fields (reading and filling text, checkbox, radio button, and list fields), drawing and graphics (shapes, lines, images, and text with font and color control), OCR integration (optional Tesseract OCR for scanned documents), PDF optimization (recompressing images and deflating streams), metadata access (title, author, subject, keywords), encryption and decryption (password-protected PDF with RC4 and AES), and cross-platform (Windows, macOS, Linux, WebAssembly).