Python PDF Libraries Compared: PyMuPDF vs pypdf vs pdfplumber (and OCR)

There’s no single “best” Python PDF library. Each is strong at different things. This page compares the five you’re most likely to need.

Quick recommendation

If you need to…	Use
Do a bit of everything, fast	PyMuPDF
Merge, split, rotate or encrypt with no compiled dependencies	pypdf
Extract tables, or text with exact positions	pdfplumber
Read text from scans, especially Asian languages or photos	PaddleOCR
Turn scanned PDFs into searchable PDFs with one command	OCRmyPDF

Feature comparison

	PyMuPDF	pypdf	pdfplumber
Extract text	✅ Excellent	✅ Basic	✅ Very good, layout-aware
Extract tables	✅ find_tables()	❌	✅ Best-in-class
Extract images	✅	✅	⚠️ Metadata and positions
Render pages to PNG/JPG	✅	❌	⚠️ Via pypdfium2 (debugging)
Merge / split / rotate	✅	✅	❌
Add text, watermarks	✅	⚠️ Stamp from another PDF	❌
True redaction	✅	❌	❌
Encrypt / decrypt	✅	✅	⚠️ Open encrypted files only
Forms (read/fill)	✅	✅	⚠️ Low-level access only
Pure Python	❌ (C library)	✅	✅ (with pdfminer.six)
Licence	AGPL v3 or commercial	BSD	MIT

Speed

A quick test: extracting text from a simple 300-page PDF on the same machine (one run, PyMuPDF 1.28.2, pypdf 6.19.0, pdfplumber 0.11.10):

Library	Time
PyMuPDF	0.21 s
pypdf	0.89 s
pdfplumber	2.9 s

Real documents vary, but the order is typical: PyMuPDF is several times faster than pure-Python libraries, and pdfplumber trades speed for detail.

PyMuPDF

The all-rounder, built on the MuPDF C engine.

import pymupdf

doc = pymupdf.open("input.pdf")
print(doc[0].get_text())

• Pros: fastest; widest feature set, including rendering, redaction, annotations and table detection; handles damaged files well.
• Cons: AGPL licence for closed-source or SaaS use unless you buy a commercial licence.

Full guide: PyMuPDF tutorial.

pypdf

Pure Python, no compiled dependencies, permissive licence. The successor of PyPDF2.

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
print(reader.pages[0].extract_text())

writer = PdfWriter()
for path in ["a.pdf", "b.pdf"]:
    writer.append(path)
writer.write("merged.pdf")

• Pros: installs anywhere (serverless, restricted environments); BSD licence; good for page manipulation, metadata, encryption and forms.
• Cons: slower; basic text extraction; can’t render pages.

pdfplumber

Built on pdfminer.six, designed for extracting data accurately.

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("input.pdf") as pdf:
    page = pdf.pages[0]
    print(page.extract_text())
    print(page.extract_tables())
# [[['Item', 'Qty', 'Price'], ['Paper', '2', '10.00'], ['Ink', '1', '30.00']]]

• Pros: excellent table extraction with tunable settings; access to every character, line and rectangle with coordinates; visual debugging.
• Cons: slowest of the three; read-only, so it can’t modify PDFs.

OCR: PaddleOCR vs OCRmyPDF

None of the libraries above can read scanned PDFs, because those pages are images. You need OCR.

	PaddleOCR	OCRmyPDF
Engine	Deep-learning models (PP-OCR)	Tesseract
Best at	Photos, poor scans, rotated text, Chinese/Japanese/Korean	Clean printed documents
Output	Text and boxes (you build the PDF)	Searchable PDF, ready to use
Setup	pip install paddlepaddle paddleocr, then downloads models	pip install ocrmypdf, plus Tesseract and Ghostscript installed on the system
GPU	Optional, much faster	Not used
Licence	Apache 2.0	MPL 2.0

OCRmyPDF in one line:

ocrmypdf --language eng input.pdf output.pdf

PaddleOCR gives you text and coordinates to use however you like: see How to OCR a PDF with PaddleOCR, including a complete searchable-PDF script built with PyMuPDF.

Common combinations

• Text extraction pipeline: PyMuPDF to read; if a page returns no text, send it to PaddleOCR.
• Invoice or report data: pdfplumber for tables, PyMuPDF for everything else.
• Closed-source product: pypdf plus pdfplumber, with PaddleOCR or OCRmyPDF for scans. All have permissive licences.