PDFKeeper

Judgement

What it is

Complete system

What it does

A Windows desktop app that stores PDF documents in a SQLite, MySQL or Oracle database with full-text search, tags such as category and tax year, notes and bulk upload folders.

Adopt it when

A small office on Windows wants a free searchable archive for PDFs such as invoices and tax records without a cloud document system.

Watch out

It is Windows-only, maintained by one person, and the GPL-3.0 license matters if you plan to redistribute changes.

Ready for

Usable

Runs as

Desktop app

Built with

C#, .NET Framework, WinForms and SQLite

How established

Established: started 10 years ago, latest release v12.0.1.

What the license allows

Use inside your business is unrestricted, but anything you distribute that includes it must be released under the same license.

Judged on 2026-11-06 from the project's README and GitHub data. The license and age lines are worked out directly.

Built from

Follow it down: PDFKeeper → Runtime → LLVM project → runs on a microchip

How compilers were built, back to punched paper tape

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