pdfmux

Self-healing PDF extraction with per-page confidence scoring. Open-source LlamaParse alternative for RAG pipelines, MCP server for Claude Desktop, LangChain + LlamaIndex loaders. Ranked #2 on opendataloader-bench (0.900).

The only PDF extractor that audits its own output. Catches blank pages, scrambled columns, broken tables — re-extracts them with a stronger backend. So your LLM gets clean data, not silent garbage. Routes each page to the best of 5 rule-based backends + BYOK LLM fallback (Gemini / Claude / GPT-4o / Ollama). One CLI. One API. Zero config.

<p align="center"> <img src="demo.svg" alt="pdfmux terminal demo" width="700" /> </p>

PDF ──> pdfmux router ──> best extractor per page ──> audit ──> re-extract failures ──> Markdown / JSON / chunks
            |
            ├─ PyMuPDF         (digital text, 0.01s/page)
            ├─ OpenDataLoader  (complex layouts, 0.05s/page)
            ├─ RapidOCR        (scanned pages, CPU-only)
            ├─ Docling         (tables, 97.9% TEDS)
            ├─ Surya           (heavy OCR fallback)
            ├─ Marker          (academic papers, neural)
            ├─ Mistral OCR     ($0.002/page, 96.6% tables)
            └─ YOUR LLM        (Gemini / Gemma 4 / Claude / GPT-4o / Ollama / Mistral — BYOK via YAML)

Install

pip install pdfmux

That handles digital PDFs. For any real-world batch, install `pdfmux[ocr]` too — almost every directory of PDFs has at least one scan, and without OCR those pages return empty text:

pip install "pdfmux[ocr]"             # ⭐ recommended — RapidOCR for scanned pages (~200MB, CPU)

Other backends, by document type:

pip install "pdfmux[tables]"          # Docling — table-heavy docs (~500MB)
pip install "pdfmux[opendataloader]"  # OpenDataLoader — complex layouts (Java 11+)
pip install "pdfmux[marker]"          # Marker — neural extraction for academic papers
pip install "pdfmux[llm]"             # Gemini fallback (default LLM)
pip install "pdfmux[llm-claude]"      # Claude (Sonnet / Opus)
pip install "pdfmux[llm-openai]"      # GPT-4o family
pip install "pdfmux[llm-ollama]"      # Ollama (any local model)
pip install "pdfmux[llm-mistral]"     # Mistral OCR API ($0.002/page)
pip install "pdfmux[llm-all]"         # all LLM providers (incl. Gemma 4 via Gemini key)
pip install "pdfmux[watch]"           # `pdfmux watch <dir>` auto-convert on change
pip install "pdfmux[all]"             # everything

Requires Python 3.11+.

Quick Start

CLI

# zero config — just works
pdfmux convert invoice.pdf
# invoice.pdf -> invoice.md (2 pages, 95% confidence, via pymupdf4llm)

# RAG-ready chunks with token limits
pdfmux convert report.pdf --chunk --max-tokens 500

# cost-aware extraction with budget cap
pdfmux convert report.pdf --mode economy --budget 0.50

# schema-guided structured extraction (5 built-in presets)
pdfmux convert invoice.pdf --schema invoice

# BYOK any LLM for hardest pages
pdfmux convert scan.pdf --llm-provider claude

# use a built-in or saved profile (invoices, receipts, papers, contracts, bulk-rag)
pdfmux convert invoice.pdf --profile invoices

# predict cost before running anything
pdfmux estimate big-report.pdf --llm-provider gemini

# stream pages as NDJSON as they finish (great for long documents)
pdfmux stream report.pdf --quality high

# auto-convert any new PDFs that land in a folder
pdfmux watch ./inbox/ -o ./output/

# diff two extractions side-by-side
pdfmux diff old.pdf new.pdf

# batch a directory — writes manifest.json with per-doc confidence
pdfmux convert ./docs/ -o ./output/

# CI mode: fail the run if any document is below 0.20 confidence
pdfmux convert ./docs/ -o ./output/ --strict --min-confidence 0.20

# pre-flight a directory: which extras do you actually need for THIS batch?
pdfmux doctor --check ./docs/

# results are cached by file hash — re-runs are instant; bypass with --no-cache
pdfmux convert report.pdf --no-cache
pdfmux convert report.pdf --clear-cache

Python

For batch processing, use batch_extract() — not a subprocess.run(['pdfmux', ...]) loop. Same pipeline, no per-file process spawn, handles non-ASCII filenames:

import pdfmux
from pathlib import Path

# Batch extract — yields (path, result) tuples as each PDF completes.
pdfs = list(Path("./inbox").glob("*.pdf"))
for path, result in pdfmux.batch_extract(pdfs, quality="standard"):
    if isinstance(result, Exception):
        print(f"FAILED {path.name}: {result}")
        continue
    if result.confidence < 0.50:
        print(f"REVIEW {path.name} ({result.confidence:.2f})")
    else:
        print(f"OK     {path.name} ({result.confidence:.2f})")

# Single-file helpers.
text   = pdfmux.extract_text("report.pdf")             # markdown string
data   = pdfmux.extract_json("report.pdf")             # locked schema dict
chunks = pdfmux.chunk("report.pdf", max_tokens=500)    # RAG-ready chunks

Don't wrap pdfmux with your own pypdf/pdfplumber fallback. pdfmux already routes per page through PyMuPDF → RapidOCR → vision LLM. PyMuPDF tolerates malformed PDFs that pypdf rejects ("Stream has ended unexpectedly"), so a downstream pypdf fallback turns recoverable PDFs into failures. Trust the router; check the confidence score on the result.

Architecture

                           ┌─────────────────────────────┐
                           │     Segment Detector         │
                           │  text / tables / images /    │
                           │  formulas / headers per page │
                           └─────────────┬───────────────┘
                                         │
                    ┌────────────────────────────────────────┐
                    │            Router Engine                │
                    │                                        │
                    │   economy ── balanced ── premium        │
                    │   (minimize $)  (default)  (max quality)│
                    │   budget caps: --budget 0.50            │
                    └────────────────────┬───────────────────┘
                                         │
          ┌──────────┬──────────┬────────┴────────┬──────────┐
          │          │          │                  │          │
     PyMuPDF   OpenData    RapidOCR           Docling     LLM
     digital   Loader      scanned            tables    (BYOK)
     0.01s/pg  complex     CPU-only           97.9%    any provider
               layouts                        TEDS
          │          │          │                  │          │
          └──────────┴──────────┴────────┬────────┴──────────┘
                                         │
                    ┌────────────────────────────────────────┐
                    │           Quality Auditor               │
                    │                                        │
                    │   4-signal dynamic confidence scoring   │
                    │   per-page: good / bad / empty          │
                    │   if bad -> re-extract with next backend│
                    └────────────────────┬───────────────────┘
                                         │
                    ┌────────────────────────────────────────┐
                    │           Output Pipeline               │
                    │                                        │
                    │   heading injection (font-size analysis)│
                    │   table extraction + normalization      │
                    │   text cleanup + merge                  │
                    │   confidence score (honest, not inflated)│
                    └────────────────────────────────────────┘

Key design decisions

• Router, not extractor. pdfmux does not compete with PyMuPDF or Docling. It picks the best one per page.
• Agentic multi-pass. Extract, audit confidence, re-extract failures with a stronger backend. Bad pages get retried automatically.
• Segment-level detection. Each page is classified by content type (text, tables, images, formulas, headers) before routing.
• 4-signal confidence. Dynamic quality scoring from character density, OCR noise ratio, table integrity, and heading structure. Not hardcoded thresholds.
• Document cache. Each PDF is opened once, not once per extractor. Shared across the full pipeline.
• Data flywheel. Local telemetry tracks which extractors win per document type. Routing improves with usage.

Features

CLI Reference

pdfmux convert

pdfmux convert <file-or-dir> [options]

Options:
  -o, --output PATH          Output file or directory
  -f, --format FORMAT        markdown | json | csv | llm (default: markdown)
  -q, --quality QUALITY      fast | standard | high (default: standard)
  -s, --schema SCHEMA        JSON schema file or preset (invoice, receipt, contract, resume, paper)
  --chunk                    Output RAG-ready chunks
  --max-tokens N             Max tokens per chunk (default: 500)
  --mode MODE                economy | balanced | premium (default: balanced)
  --budget AMOUNT            Max spend per document in USD
  --llm-provider PROVIDER    LLM backend: gemini | claude | openai | ollama
  --confidence               Include confidence score in output
  --stdout                   Print to stdout instead of file

pdfmux serve

Start the MCP server for AI agent integration.

pdfmux serve              # stdio mode (Claude Desktop, Cursor)
pdfmux serve --http 8080  # HTTP mode

pdfmux doctor

pdfmux doctor
# ┌──────────────────┬─────────────┬─────────┬──────────────────────────────────┐
# │ Extractor        │ Status      │ Version │ Install                          │
# ├──────────────────┼─────────────┼─────────┼──────────────────────────────────┤
# │ PyMuPDF          │ installed   │ 1.25.3  │                                  │
# │ OpenDataLoader   │ installed   │ 0.3.1   │                                  │
# │ RapidOCR         │ installed   │ 3.0.6   │                                  │
# │ Docling          │ missing     │ --      │ pip install pdfmux[tables]       │
# │ Surya            │ missing     │ --      │ pip install pdfmux[ocr-heavy]    │
# │ LLM (Gemini)     │ configured  │ --      │ GEMINI_API_KEY set               │
# └──────────────────┴─────────────┴─────────┴──────────────────────────────────┘

pdfmux benchmark

pdfmux benchmark report.pdf
# ┌──────────────────┬────────┬────────────┬─────────────┬──────────────────────┐
# │ Extractor        │   Time │ Confidence │      Output │ Status               │
# ├──────────────────┼────────┼────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────────────┤
# │ PyMuPDF          │  0.02s │        95% │ 3,241 chars │ all pages good       │
# │ Multi-pass       │  0.03s │        95% │ 3,241 chars │ all pages good       │
# │ RapidOCR         │  4.20s │        88% │ 2,891 chars │ ok                   │
# │ OpenDataLoader   │  0.12s │        97% │ 3,310 chars │ best                 │
# └──────────────────┴────────┴────────────┴─────────────┴──────────────────────┘

pdfmux estimate

Predict spend (and which backends will run) before processing.

pdfmux estimate report.pdf --quality high --llm-provider gemini
# Pages       : 47
# Extractors  : pymupdf4llm + gemini-2.5-flash on 9 pages
# Estimated   : $0.0234
# Cache hit?  : no  (first run for this file)

pdfmux stream

Emit NDJSON events as pages complete — useful for very long PDFs and live UIs.

pdfmux stream long.pdf --quality high
# {"event":"classified","page_count":312,"plan":"pymupdf+gemini-fallback"}
# {"event":"page","page_num":0,"confidence":0.97,"chars":1842}
# {"event":"page","page_num":1,"confidence":0.92,"chars":1611,"ocr":true}
# ...
# {"event":"complete","confidence":0.94,"cost_usd":0.0712}

pdfmux watch

Auto-convert any PDFs that land in a directory. Survives until Ctrl+C.

pdfmux watch ./inbox/ -o ./output/ --profile bulk-rag

pdfmux diff

Side-by-side extraction comparison (quality, content, cost).

pdfmux diff a.pdf b.pdf --quality standard

pdfmux profiles

Saved configs at ~/.config/pdfmux/profiles.yaml. Built-ins ship for the common shapes; save your own for project defaults.

pdfmux profiles list
# invoices    quality=standard, schema=invoice, format=json
# receipts    quality=fast,     schema=receipt, format=json
# papers      quality=high,     chunk=true, max_tokens=500
# contracts   quality=high,     schema=contract
# bulk-rag    quality=standard, format=llm, chunk=true

pdfmux profiles show invoices
pdfmux profiles save my-default --quality high --format llm --chunk
pdfmux profiles delete my-default

# use a profile when converting
pdfmux convert file.pdf --profile invoices

Python API

Text extraction

import pdfmux

text = pdfmux.extract_text("report.pdf")                    # -> str (markdown)
text = pdfmux.extract_text("report.pdf", quality="fast")    # PyMuPDF only, instant
text = pdfmux.extract_text("report.pdf", quality="high")    # LLM-assisted

Structured extraction

data = pdfmux.extract_json("report.pdf")
# data["page_count"]   -> 12
# data["confidence"]   -> 0.91
# data["ocr_pages"]    -> [2, 5, 8]
# data["pages"][0]["key_values"]  -> [{"key": "Date", "value": "2026-02-28"}]
# data["pages"][0]["tables"]      -> [{"headers": [...], "rows": [...]}]

RAG chunking

chunks = pdfmux.chunk("report.pdf", max_tokens=500)
for c in chunks:
    print(f"{c['title']}: {c['tokens']} tokens (pages {c['page_start']}-{c['page_end']})")

Schema-guided extraction

data = pdfmux.extract_json("invoice.pdf", schema="invoice")
# Uses built-in invoice preset: extracts date, vendor, line items, totals
# Also accepts a path to a custom JSON Schema file

Streaming (bounded memory)

from pdfmux.extractors import get_extractor

ext = get_extractor("fast")
for page in ext.extract("large-500-pages.pdf"):  # Iterator[PageResult]
    process(page.text)  # constant memory, even on 500-page PDFs

Types and errors

from pdfmux import (
    # Enums
    Quality,              # FAST, STANDARD, HIGH
    OutputFormat,         # MARKDOWN, JSON, CSV, LLM
    PageQuality,          # GOOD, BAD, EMPTY

    # Data objects (frozen dataclasses)
    PageResult,           # page: text, page_num, confidence, quality, extractor
    DocumentResult,       # document: pages, source, confidence, extractor_used
    Chunk,                # chunk: title, text, page_start, page_end, tokens

    # Errors
    PdfmuxError,          # base -- catch this for all pdfmux errors
    FileError,            # file not found, unreadable, not a PDF
    ExtractionError,      # extraction failed
    ExtractorNotAvailable,# requested backend not installed
    FormatError,          # invalid output format
    AuditError,           # audit could not complete
)

Framework Integrations

LangChain

pip install langchain-pdfmux

from langchain_pdfmux import PDFMuxLoader

loader = PDFMuxLoader("report.pdf", quality="standard")
docs = loader.load()  # -> list[Document] with confidence metadata

LlamaIndex

pip install llama-index-readers-pdfmux

from llama_index.readers.pdfmux import PDFMuxReader

reader = PDFMuxReader(quality="standard")
docs = reader.load_data("report.pdf")  # -> list[Document]

MCP Server (AI Agents)

Listed on mcpservers.org. One-line setup:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pdfmux": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "pdfmux-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Or via Claude Code:

claude mcp add pdfmux -- npx -y pdfmux-mcp

Tools exposed: convert_pdf, analyze_pdf, extract_structured, extract_streaming, get_pdf_metadata, batch_convert.

BYOK LLM Configuration

pdfmux supports any LLM via 5 lines of YAML. Bring your own keys -- nothing leaves your machine unless you configure it to.

# ~/.pdfmux/llm.yaml
provider: claude          # gemini | claude | openai | ollama | any OpenAI-compatible
model: claude-sonnet-4-20250514
api_key: ${ANTHROPIC_API_KEY}
base_url: https://api.anthropic.com  # optional, for custom endpoints
max_cost_per_page: 0.02   # budget cap

Supported providers:

Every provider's extract_page() is wrapped in @with_retry(max_attempts=3, backoff_base=2.0), which honors Retry-After headers on 429s and skips retries on auth failures so a bad key fails fast.

Arabic & RTL Support

pdfmux ships first-class support for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Hebrew. Out of the box, RTL detection runs on every PDF and PyMuPDF-extracted pages are passed through the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm so glyphs that were stored in left-to-right order render in correct reading order.

# Default install — already includes python-bidi for RTL reordering
pip install pdfmux

# Recommended for Arabic-heavy docs — adds Gemma 4 vision OCR
pip install "pdfmux[arabic,llm-gemma]"

# One credential covers Gemma + Gemini (same Google endpoint)
export GEMINI_API_KEY=...

What happens automatically:

• pdfmux convert detects Arabic content and routes pages with >5%

Arabic characters through the Arabic-aware extractor chain.

• PyMuPDF, RapidOCR, and Docling outputs are post-processed with the

Bidi algorithm — markdown headings (#) and pipe-table rows preserve structure, only inner text is reordered.

• DocumentResult.has_arabic is set to True whenever any page contains

Arabic script.

What requires opt-in:

• Vision LLM extraction. Set --llm-provider gemma (or any vision

provider) to route Arabic pages through Gemma 4 instead of PyMuPDF.

• Aggressive normalization (Tatweel removal, Alef/Yeh unification,

Tashkeel stripping) — call pdfmux.arabic.normalize_arabic(text) on extracted strings if you need canonicalized output for search or embedding.

from pdfmux.arabic import (
    is_arabic_text,
    is_rtl_dominant,
    fix_bidi_order,
    normalize_arabic,
)

text = "مرحبا بالعالم"
assert is_arabic_text(text)
assert is_rtl_dominant(text)

# Fix glyph order from PyMuPDF / OCR engines
visual = fix_bidi_order(text)

# Canonicalize for indexing — strip Tatweel, unify Alef variants, drop diacritics
indexable = normalize_arabic("أَحْمَدْ")  # → "احمد"

Benchmark

Tested on opendataloader-bench -- 200 real-world PDFs across financial reports, legal filings, academic papers, and scanned documents.

#2 overall, #1 among free tools. 99.5% of the paid #1 score at zero cost per page. Best heading detection of any engine tested. Image table OCR extracts tables embedded as images.

Smart Result Cache

Re-running the same extraction is instant. pdfmux hashes every input PDF (SHA-256) and keys results on (file_hash, quality, format, schema). Cache files live under ~/.cache/pdfmux/results/, expire after 30 days, and are LRU-evicted at 1 GB.

pdfmux convert big-report.pdf            # first run: 14.2s
pdfmux convert big-report.pdf            # cache hit: 0.05s
pdfmux convert big-report.pdf --no-cache # bypass cache (still writes back)
pdfmux convert big-report.pdf --clear-cache  # purge and re-run

The cache also speeds up --profile, --schema, and --format switches — each combination is keyed independently, so you can flip between Markdown and JSON for the same document for free after the first extraction.

Confidence Scoring

Every result includes a 4-signal confidence score:

• 95-100% -- clean digital text, fully extractable
• 80-95% -- good extraction, minor OCR noise on some pages
• 50-80% -- partial extraction, some pages unrecoverable
• <50% -- significant content missing, warnings included

When confidence drops below 80%, pdfmux tells you exactly what went wrong and how to fix it:

Page 4: 32% confidence. 0 chars extracted from image-heavy page.
  -> Install pdfmux[ocr] for RapidOCR support on 6 image-heavy pages.

Cost Modes

Set a hard budget cap: --budget 0.50 stops LLM calls when spend reaches $0.50 per document.

Why pdfmux?

pdfmux is not another PDF extractor. It is the orchestration layer that picks the right extractor per page, verifies the result, and retries failures.

Open source Reducto alternative: what costs $0.015/page elsewhere is free with pdfmux's rule-based backends, or ~$0.002/page average with BYOK LLM fallback.

Development

git clone https://github.com/NameetP/pdfmux.git
cd pdfmux
python3.12 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"

pytest              # 659 tests
ruff check src/ tests/
ruff format src/ tests/

Contributing

1. Fork the repo
2. Create a branch (git checkout -b feature/your-feature)
3. Write tests for new functionality
4. Ensure pytest and ruff check pass
5. Open a PR

License

MIT

<!-- mcp-name: io.github.NameetP/pdfmux -->