paperless-ngx
by paperless-ngx
Paperless-ngx is a self-hosted document management system that turns scanned and digital documents into a searchable online archive. It is used to store, index and find paperwork such as invoices, receipts and letters without keeping paper copies.
- Stars
- 47.1k +19 a day
- Licence
- GPL-3.0
- Runs on
- A small server
- Setup
- Moderate
- Language
- Python
- Age
- 1717 days
What you can do with it
- Scan or upload paper and PDF documents and have their text read automatically using OCR
- Search, tag and organise invoices, receipts and contracts in one archive
- Run it on your own server and use the web interface to find any document quickly
Make money with it
Offer a paperless office setup and document digitisation service to local small businesses and households, using Paperless-ngx as the archive.
An idea, not financial advice. Check the licence before charging for anything built on it.
Ways a business could use it
- Keep invoices, receipts and contracts in a searchable archive so tax and bookkeeping records are quick to find
- Cut the cost of paid document storage and filing services by running your own archive
Can you use it commercially?
Free to use. Anything you distribute that includes it must be open-sourced under the same licence.
Not legal advice. Read the project's licence file before building a product on it.
Getting it running
It is installed with Docker Compose, either by hand or with the project's install script, and the documentation covers other methods.
Follow the official instructions in the project README.
Things to check
- Documents are stored unencrypted, so it should not be run on an untrusted host
- No security guarantees are made, so you need your own backups and access controls
- Requires a server and some technical knowledge to maintain
Checked 27 Oct 2026. Summary drafted by AI from the project's README.
