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How to Deploy Stirling PDF on Hong Kong VPS: Self-Hosted PDF Processing for Teams (2026)

Stirling PDF is an open-source, self-hosted PDF manipulation suite with over 50 tools: merge, split, compress, convert, rotate, watermark, OCR, sign, edit metadata, redact, and more. Deployed on a Hong Kong VPS, it gives your team a complete PDF processing platform without uploading sensitive documents to third-party services — critical for financial documents, legal contracts, and personal data that should never leave your controlled infrastructure.

Step 1: Deploy with Docker

mkdir -p /home/deploy/stirling-pdf
cd /home/deploy/stirling-pdf
nano docker-compose.yml
version: '3.8'

services:
  stirling-pdf:
    image: frooodle/s-pdf:latest
    container_name: stirling-pdf
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "127.0.0.1:8090:8080"
    volumes:
      - ./trainingData:/usr/share/tessdata   # OCR language data
      - ./configs:/configs
      - ./customFiles:/customFiles
    environment:
      - DOCKER_ENABLE_SECURITY=false         # Set true for login/auth
      - INSTALL_BOOK_AND_ADVANCED_HTML_OPS=false
      - LANGS=en_GB                          # Add zh-CN for Chinese OCR
      - SYSTEM_ROOTURIPATH=/pdf              # Optional: serve at /pdf path
docker compose up -d

Step 2: Nginx Configuration

nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/stirling-pdf
server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name pdf.yourdomain.com;

    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/pdf.yourdomain.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/pdf.yourdomain.com/privkey.pem;

    # Restrict to team IPs or use Nginx basic auth
    # satisfy any;
    # allow 10.0.0.0/8;
    # auth_basic "PDF Tools";
    # auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/.htpasswd;

    # Large file uploads for PDF processing
    client_max_body_size 500M;
    client_body_timeout 300s;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8090;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_read_timeout 300s;
        proxy_send_timeout 300s;
    }
}

Step 3: Enable Chinese OCR

# Download Chinese OCR language data
mkdir -p /home/deploy/stirling-pdf/trainingData
docker compose exec stirling-pdf sh -c \
  "apt-get install -y tesseract-ocr-chi-sim tesseract-ocr-chi-tra"

# Or mount pre-downloaded tessdata files
wget -P /home/deploy/stirling-pdf/trainingData \
  https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tessdata/raw/main/chi_sim.traineddata \
  https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tessdata/raw/main/chi_tra.traineddata

docker compose restart stirling-pdf

Key Use Cases for Asia-Pacific Teams

  • Financial document processing: Merge bank statements, compress quarterly reports, extract pages from contracts — all processed on your Hong Kong server without leaving your infrastructure
  • Chinese document OCR: Extract text from scanned Chinese-language documents with chi_sim language data installed
  • Contract management: Split large contract PDFs into individual sections, add watermarks for review copies, compress for email delivery
  • Compliance redaction: Remove sensitive information from documents before sharing externally
  • Form processing: Flatten filled PDF forms, extract form data to CSV

Conclusion

Stirling PDF on a Hong Kong VPS gives your team a complete document processing platform that keeps sensitive files on infrastructure you control. CN2 GIA routing means fast document uploads from mainland China, and the self-hosted deployment eliminates any concern about third-party services storing your business documents.

Add Stirling PDF to your self-hosted service stack on Server.HK’s Hong Kong VPS plans — it runs efficiently on 512 MB RAM alongside your other self-hosted applications.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Stirling PDF free for commercial use?

Stirling PDF is licensed under MIT — free for both personal and commercial use with no restrictions. You can deploy it for your business, charge clients for access, or integrate it into your products without any licensing fees.

Can Stirling PDF handle large files?

Yes, within memory constraints. PDF operations are memory-intensive — processing a 100-page PDF may temporarily require 200–500 MB of RAM. For teams processing large documents regularly, allocate at least 2 GB RAM to the Stirling PDF container. The Nginx configuration above sets a 500 MB upload limit — adjust based on your typical file sizes.

Does Stirling PDF store uploaded documents?

By default, Stirling PDF processes documents in memory and returns the result — files are not persistently stored after processing. Processed documents exist temporarily in the container’s working directory during the operation and are cleaned up afterward. No document data is sent to any external service.