The most advanced, scalable, and mature open source document management system
Mayan EDMS is a free, open source electronic document management system in continuous development since 2010. Self-hosted and built on Python/Django, it provides OCR, document versioning, fine-grained permissions, configurable workflows, and a full REST API, and is trusted by government, NGO, academic, and commercial organizations to manage hundreds of millions of documents. The software is free; Mayan EDMS LLC sells optional support plans and custom contracts.
Every document keeps a full version history, so changes can be tracked and earlier versions restored at any time
Built-in optical character recognition extracts text from scanned documents and makes entire archives searchable
State-based workflow engine automates document approval, review, and routing processes with conditional transitions
Role-based access control lets administrators grant permissions per document, document type, or organizational unit
Custom metadata types, tags, and cabinets organize documents and drive automatic indexing structures
Comprehensive REST API exposes the full feature set for integrations and embedding document management into other products
Fully browser-based administration and configuration with a comprehensive settings system - no desktop client required
Local, state, and national government agencies use Mayan EDMS to manage official records with audit trails, retention workflows, and strict role-based access control on sovereign infrastructure.
Banking, insurance, and aerospace organizations self-host Mayan to keep sensitive documents on-premises while meeting regulatory requirements for versioning, permissions, and traceability.
Organizations digitize paper archives by scanning documents into Mayan, where built-in OCR makes every page full-text searchable and metadata keeps archives organized.
Software vendors integrate Mayan's REST API - or relicense the codebase - to add enterprise document management capabilities to their own products.
Hundreds of thousands of active installations efficiently manage hundreds of millions of documents per day
Interface localized into more than 30 languages, supporting international and multilingual deployments
Teams model review and approval processes as Mayan workflows, automatically routing contracts, invoices, and HR documents through multi-stage sign-off.

The open-source AI-native vector database for search and retrieval