Microsoft SharePoint vs Paperless-ngx
Microsoft SharePoint and Paperless-ngx are both document management software. Microsoft SharePoint is a commercial product from Microsoft. Paperless-ngx is open source under GPL-3.0, with 47k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick Microsoft SharePoint when
- An organisation on Microsoft 365 wants document storage, intranet and records management with no extra licence.
- Pick Paperless-ngx when
- A household or small office wants to go paperless and can run Docker.
Side by side
Microsoft 365's document libraries, intranet sites and lists, with versioning, permissions, retention and the storage behind Teams and OneDrive sharing.
Turns scanned and emailed documents into a searchable archive with OCR, automatic tagging and matching, and a web interface.
Permissions and site structure sprawl quickly without governance.
You are responsible for backups of your only copy of important documents.
Production-ready (both)
Cloud service and self-hosted server
Self-hosted server
Not published
Python, Django, TypeScript, Angular, PostgreSQL and Redis
Closed source, sold by Microsoft
Open source, GPL-3.0 (strong copyleft)
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
Use inside your business is unrestricted, but anything you distribute that includes it must be released under the same license.
2.7k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
47k GitHub stars
Not known
Established: started 4 years ago, latest release v3.4.1.
Other comparisons
More document management systems
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.