What It Is

Paperless-ngx is a community-supported open-source document management system (DMS) that lets you turn physical or digital documents into a searchable, organized digital archive. It’s designed for self-hosting, giving full control over your data without relying on cloud services.

Key Features

Document Import & OCR: Scan or drop files into the system; built-in OCR (using Tesseract) converts them into searchable PDF/A.
Organization: Use tags, correspondents, types, and custom fields to categorize documents.
Search: Full-text search with autocomplete, relevance sorting, and highlighting.
Web UI: A modern interface with drag-and-drop uploads, customizable dashboards, and bulk editing.
Automation & API: Workflow rules and a fully documented REST API for integrations.
Multi-user & Permissions: Built-in user management and access control.

How It Works

You feed documents into Paperless-ngx either by watching a “consume” folder, uploading through the UI, or routing emails into the system. The app indexes content, assigns metadata, and stores the files alongside searchable text.

Installation

The recommended way to run Paperless-ngx is via Docker Compose or an interactive install script. Bare-metal installs are possible but more complex.

Use Cases

Personal document archiving (bills, receipts, letters)
Small business document workflows (invoices, contracts)
Private/self-hosted compliance with internal document retention policies

Notes & Configuration

Optional components like Apache Tika and Gotenberg expand support for Office formats and email parsing. Filename formatting, storage paths, and backup/export tools are configurable to suit your workflow.