What's installed on your Stirling PDF server?
- Stirling PDF 3.2, the standard build of the official Docker image
- LibreOffice, Tesseract, OCRmyPDF, Calibre and Ghostscript inside the image
- Required login, with an account named yonetici (Turkish for admin) and a generated password
- Turkish as the default interface language
- Anonymous usage reporting switched off
- Persistent folders for settings and text recognition language packs
- HTTPS through Caddy on an sslip.io address based on your IP, so a domain is optional
- Firewall with only ports 22, 80 and 443 open
What size do you need for Stirling PDF?
Stirling PDF's production guide asks for at least 4 GB of RAM for this image, and more for larger teams. The smallest size in our catalogue is 2 GB, but Office conversion and text recognition use memory, so follow the official advice and start on 4 GB. For busy teams or long text recognition jobs, look at 8 GB. There's no official headcount. You can grow RAM and CPU separately from your panel, and your data and IP address stay the same.
| Use | Size | Price | Choose |
|---|---|---|---|
| A few people | 4 GB RAM · 2 vCore · 60 GB NVMe | $6.89/mo | |
| Small team | 8 GB RAM · 4 vCore · 120 GB NVMe | $13.62/mo | |
| Company | 16 GB RAM · 8 vCore · 200 GB NVMe | $25.15/mo |
Who is it for?
- Anyone who won't upload contracts or ID scans to PDF websites
- Offices that repeat the same PDF jobs again and again
- Small businesses setting up a shared PDF tool for up to 5 people
- Developers adding PDF conversion to their own software through the API
What happens after you order?
- Set the size to 4 GB and complete your payment.
- Your server starts and Stirling PDF installs itself. Carry on when the App row in your panel says Stirling PDF is ready.
- On the Overview tab, click Open app. The login is yonetici, and the password is in the Password row.
- If you need text recognition on Turkish documents, download the Turkish pack under Settings > Server > Advanced.
- Create accounts for your team under Settings > Workspace > Users.
- Upload a PDF, pick a tool and download the result.
With every server
- Daily backups included in the price
- Unlimited traffic
- Full root access
- Scale RAM and CPU up or down later, and grow the disk
- Location: Istanbul · IST-1.
Good to know
- The free plan covers up to 5 users on a server. More than that needs the paid Team plan, and the licence isn't included in the price. Stirling PDF is an open-core product, so not every part is open source.
- Text recognition comes with English, German, French, Portuguese and Simplified Chinese. You download the Turkish pack yourself, and it stays in a persistent folder.
- For email invitations, enter your own SMTP service under Settings > Server > Integrations > SMTP Mail. The service isn't included in the price. You can also create accounts directly, with no email involved.
- Don't use the app as file storage, and download your results to your computer. The install doesn't mount the app's storage folder on its own persistent volume.
- After 5 failed logins, an account locks for 120 minutes. The default upload limit is 2000 MB.
- The install stays on version 3.2.2, and Stirling PDF's documentation also advises pinning a version. Updates are your responsibility: change the tag in compose.yaml and run docker compose up -d.
Stirling PDF questions and answers
How much RAM does Stirling PDF need?
The official production guide asks for at least 4 GB of RAM for this image, and more for larger teams. The smallest size in our catalogue is 2 GB, but start on 4 GB if you'll use Office conversion or text recognition.
How many users does Stirling PDF allow for free?
The free plan covers up to 5 users and includes all the PDF tools, the REST API and OAuth2 single sign-on. More users, an external database and audit logging belong to the paid plans.
Do my PDF files go anywhere else?
No. Files are processed on your own server and aren't sent to a third-party service. Only logged-in users can reach the tools, and usage reporting is switched off.
What can I do with Stirling PDF?
It offers more than 50 tools for editing, merging, splitting, signing, redacting, compressing, converting and running text recognition on PDFs. LibreOffice inside the image handles turning Office documents into PDFs.
Does text recognition (OCR) work in Turkish?
Yes, once you add the pack, because Turkish isn't installed by default. Go to Settings > Server > Advanced and pick Turkish under Download additional tessdata languages. The server fetches it from the internet and keeps it in a persistent folder.
Can I use Stirling PDF through an API?
Yes. The REST API is part of the free plan, so your own software can send a file and get the processed result back. Stirling PDF's API documentation has the details.