The short answer: iText does not publish a price. A commercial license is an annual subscription quoted on the number of PDF files you process, or a custom OEM license if you ship iText inside software you sell. Vendr, which brokers software purchases, reports an average iText contract of about $44,891 a year, with the largest deals near $210,000. The only no cost route is the AGPLv3 license, which requires you to release your own application's source code.
That makes the real question about what you are using iText for. If you generate, sign or archive PDFs inside a product, the commercial license is the normal cost of doing business and the figures below will help you budget it. If the reason iText landed on your shortlist is getting tables out of PDFs and into Excel, you are about to pay for a large library that does not do that job on its own, and there is a cheaper route covered near the end.
How much does an iText license cost?
iText's own licensing page lists three ways to use the library, and only one has a fixed price of zero. Everything else goes through a quote form. These are the terms as iText describes them, read on October 5, 2026.
| License | What you pay | What it requires | Who it fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| AGPLv3 open source | $0 | Disclose the full source code of your application, including your own code | Open source projects and internal experiments |
| Commercial subscription, volume based | Annual subscription, quoted on the number of PDFs processed | None of the AGPL terms. Support and maintenance included | Companies running iText in their own services |
| Commercial OEM distribution | Custom quote | None of the AGPL terms. Priced on your use case and deployment | Software vendors shipping iText to customers |
The volume model is the part that surprises buyers. You are not buying seats or developers. You are buying a band of PDF output, so a service that grows from 50,000 documents a year to 500,000 will move to a bigger contract at renewal. Ask for the band boundaries in writing before you sign.
Is iText free for commercial use?
Only if you accept the AGPL. The AGPLv3 lets any company use iText at no charge, but it requires you to make the complete source code of the application that uses it available, and the AGPL extends that duty to software people use over a network, not just software you distribute. For a closed source SaaS product or an internal system with proprietary logic, that is rarely acceptable, which is why most commercial users end up on a paid license.
Older versions carry different terms. iText 2.1.7 and iTextSharp 4.1.6 were released under the MPL and LGPL before iText moved to the AGPL with version 5. They are still downloadable, but they are well over a decade old, receive no security fixes and lack modern PDF features, so treating them as a free commercial option trades a license bill for a maintenance and security problem.
What drives the price of an iText quote?
Four things move the number. First, volume: the subscription is priced on how many PDFs your software produces or processes. Second, deployment: OEM distribution to your own customers is priced separately from running iText in your own infrastructure. Third, add-ons: iText lists pdfHTML, pdfOCR, pdfCalligraph, pdfOptimizer, pdfSweep and pdfXFA as separate products next to iText Core, so each one you need becomes a line on the quote. Fourth, the platform: iText is sold for Java and .NET, and some contracts cover one.
The Vendr figures give a sense of scale rather than a list price. An average near $45,000 a year says iText's typical buyer is a mid size or large software organization, not a five person team. Smaller companies report lower quotes in public forums, but nobody outside iText's sales team can tell you yours without your volume.
iText license cost compared with other PDF libraries
Most PDF SDK vendors price by quote, which makes comparison hard. Here is what each vendor publishes itself, plus the third party figures where they exist.
| Product | Published starting price | Pricing model | Third party figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| iText Core | None, quote only | Annual subscription by PDF volume, or OEM | Vendr average $44,891 a year |
| Apryse Server SDK | Entry packages from $1,500 | Modular, priced on features and deployment | Vendr median $24,351 a year |
| Aspose.PDF for .NET | $1,199 per developer, one location | Perpetual license, support extra | Not needed, list prices are public |
| PDF.co API | $9.99 a month | Credits per page and call | Not needed, list prices are public |
The full ladders are in our Apryse pricing comparison, the Aspose pricing breakdown and the PDF.co pricing guide. Since iText is now part of Apryse, it is worth asking the same sales team for both quotes if your use case could fit either product.
Does iText convert PDF to Excel?
No. iText Core reads the text on a page along with its coordinates, through PdfTextExtractor and a location strategy, but it does not detect tables and has no Excel export. To turn a statement or a report into a spreadsheet with iText you write the logic that groups characters into rows and columns, handle tables that break across pages, add the pdfOCR add-on for scanned files and write the workbook with a second library such as Apache POI.
iText used to sell a product for this kind of work. pdf2Data extracted data from PDFs using templates drawn for each layout, but Apryse stopped developing and selling it on July 7, 2024, and its pages now redirect to an Apryse SDK add-on. If you are replacing it, our iText pdf2Data alternative page compares the routes that are left.
A cheaper route when the job is PDF tables in Excel
If your team looked at iText because statements, invoices or reports arrive as PDFs and someone retypes them, the license is the smaller cost. The bigger one is the developer time to build and maintain table extraction on top of a text API. PDFXLSX does that part already: it finds each table, joins it across pages, reads scans with OCR and returns an XLSX or CSV file with amounts as real numbers.
| Need | iText route | PDFXLSX route |
|---|---|---|
| Staff convert files by hand | Build an internal tool on a commercial license | Plus at $99 a month, 500 files, 5 seats, browser upload |
| A service converts files automatically | Custom table code plus license plus pdfOCR | Pro at $199 a month or $1,188 a year, REST API, unlimited files |
| Files must never leave your servers | iText or another on premise SDK | Not a fit, we are a hosted service |
| You also generate or sign PDFs | iText covers both | Not a fit, we only convert to Excel and CSV |
The honest version: if you create PDFs, need on premise processing or ship PDF features to your own customers, iText or a similar SDK is the right purchase and our product does not replace it. If the license request exists because people need PDF tables in a spreadsheet, convert a real file with the PDF to Excel API or the uploader on our homepage before you start a procurement cycle. Once the figures are in Excel, they often go straight into reporting, and our financial report PDF to Excel converter keeps statement layouts intact for that step.
Whichever way you go, put the renewal date and the volume band on the calendar the day you sign. A volume based license renews at whatever your usage became, and teams that track it in proper contract management software get to negotiate before the auto renewal, not after.
Frequently asked questions
How much does iText cost per year?
iText does not publish prices. Commercial licenses are annual subscriptions quoted on the number of PDFs you process, or custom OEM agreements. Vendr reports an average contract of about $44,891 a year and a top end near $210,000, so expect a five figure quote for production use at a mid size company.
Is iTextSharp free for commercial use?
Current versions of iText for .NET are free only under the AGPL, which requires releasing your application's source code. The old iTextSharp 4.1.6 was LGPL licensed and can be used commercially, but it is long unmaintained, lacks security fixes and misses modern PDF features, so it is a risky foundation for new work.
Does iText offer a free trial?
Yes. iText offers a 30 day free trial of its commercial library so you can test it on your documents before requesting a quote. The trial is meant for evaluation, so plan your test files and volume estimate before you start the clock.
Do I need a commercial iText license for an internal tool?
Usually, yes, unless you are willing to meet the AGPL terms. The AGPL applies to software used over a network as well as software you distribute, so an internal web tool used by staff can still trigger the source disclosure duty. Most legal teams ask for a commercial license rather than test that boundary.
What is the best alternative to iText?
It depends on the job. For PDF generation and signing, other SDKs such as Apryse or Aspose are the direct comparison. For getting tables out of PDFs into Excel, a converter with an API, such as PDFXLSX Pro at $199 a month, removes both the license and the table code.