Stoatify vs Papra
The same archive idea, with apps, e-signatures and team controls.
Papra is a lovely open-source document archive with OCR search, self-hosted or in its EU cloud. Stoatify shares that same archiving idea and adds a hosted web app, built-in e-signatures, starter categories, secure sharing and version history.
A minimalist, open-source document archiving platform (self-host or EU cloud).
Why people move to Stoatify
Built to be a vault, not a drive.
A first-party web app
A first-party, full-featured web app in light or dark, so capture and search feel fast from the first click.
Built-in e-signatures
A drag-and-drop signable-PDF builder and multi-party signing come standard, so contracts are signed and stored in the same vault.
Ready for teams
Organizations, built-in roles, groups and email invitations support a shared business Vault.
Feature by feature
Stoatify vs Papra, side by side.
A fair look at how the two stack up for organizing and managing documents.
| Capability | Stoatify | Papra |
|---|---|---|
| Organize documents | ||
| Purpose-built for document management | ||
| Starter categories for personal and organization records | Tags only | |
| Tags, saved views & custom fields | ||
| Full-text OCR search inside scans & PDFs | ||
| Capture | ||
| Drag, drop & photo capture | Web upload | |
| Collaborate & secure | ||
| Org sharing with roles (RBAC) | Owner / member | |
| Share links for a document or a whole search (password, expiry, registry) | Documents only | |
| Files proxied behind your auth (no public object URLs) | Self-host | |
| Versioning & history | ||
| Document versioning with one-click restore | ||
| Field-level before & after change history | ||
| Org-wide activity feed | ||
| E-signatures | ||
| Drag-and-drop template / form builder | ||
| Signable field types (signature, initials, date, checkbox…) | ||
| Multi-party signing with configurable order | ||
| Cryptographic PDF signing (PAdES/PKCS7) & verification | ||
| Plan | ||
| Free plan | Yes | 512 MB |
The differences that matter
What actually changes day to day.
A full-featured web app
Stoatify delivers a first-party web app, light or dark. Papra offers a clean but more minimal web UI.
Starter categories vs free-form tags
Stoatify seeds a curated category set for personal, small-business, or enterprise work, and you can rename or add your own. Papra leans on free-form tags and custom properties you define.
Structured team workspace
Stoatify adds organizations, groups, invitations, categories and saved views around the shared document library.
E-signatures built in
Stoatify signs documents natively, with multi-party order and cryptographically sealed results. Papra has no built-in signing.
In fairness
When Papra is the better choice.
If you want a genuinely open-source (AGPL) archive you can self-host and fully own, with a clean web UI, a documented API, SDK, webhooks and CLI to build on, and an EU-hosted cloud option, Papra is excellent and we admire it. Stoatify is the better fit when you want a hosted web app with built-in e-signatures, ready-made categories, search, sharing and version history.
FAQ
Switching from Papra.
Is Stoatify open-source like Papra?+
Stoatify is a managed product rather than self-hosted software. It trades self-hosting for a hosted web app with built-in e-signatures, categories, search, sharing and version history.
Does Papra have OCR search like Stoatify?+
Yes, Papra extracts text for full-text search, so both let you search inside documents. The bigger Stoatify differences are built-in e-signatures, ready-made categories, secure sharing and version history.
How do I move from Papra to Stoatify?+
Export your documents from Papra and drag them into Stoatify, where they are OCR'd and organized into categories as they arrive.
Compare Stoatify with more tools
Manage your documents from one secure platform.
Bring your documents over from Papra and see the difference organization makes. Free to start, no credit card.
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