MuPDF
Fewer than 5 people recommend it so far, so there's no written verdict. Here is what commenters said.
4recommend
1warn against
Dec 4, 2025first mention
Oct 22, 2026latest mention
Why people recommend it
“On Linux, mupdf is a decent EPUB reader, which is very fast”
“MuPDF is an excellent PDF reader, the fastest that I have ever tested.”
Show 3 more
“I recommend mutool for decompressing the PDF”
“Mutool extracts the text just fine.”
“I'm using 1GB with TWM, DIllo, TUI tools, XTerm, MuPDF”
Caveats and dissent
“MuPDF is AGPL and would poison the license”
Often compared with
Who recommends it in their own words
Threads where it came up
- Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 8x faster than MuPDF 3 mentions
- Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor 2 mentions
- Rust Style Guide 1 mention
- Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux 1 mention
- item 48276411 1 mention
- The surprisingly complex journey to text-selectable client-side generated PDFs 1 mention
Data: mupdf.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 13
“same with MupDF, sxiv for images and MPV”
“I use Flubox+UXTerm+a bunch of CLI/TUI tools among mpv, nsxiv and mupdf.”
“With some small upstream contributions to mupdf”
“On Linux, mupdf is a decent EPUB reader, which is very fast”
“instead of MuPDF (AGPL)”
“uses MuPDF under the hood which uses an AGPL license”
“MuPDF is AGPL and would poison the license”
“MuPDF is an excellent PDF reader, the fastest that I have ever tested.”
“I recommend mutool for decompressing the PDF”
These vibe coded tests are terrible: https://github.com/Lulzx/zpdf/blob/main/python/tests/test_zpdf.py
“Mutool extracts the text just fine.”
“the licensing is a huge blocker for using mupdf in non-OSS tools”
“I'm using 1GB with TWM, DIllo, TUI tools, XTerm, MuPDF”