What is Paperless-ngx?
Paperless-ngx is an open-source document management system that transforms your paper stacks into a searchable digital archive. Invoices, contracts, letters – everything gets scanned, OCR-processed, and automatically categorized.
The intelligent auto-matching feature learns from your decisions. After 50-100 documents, Paperless sorts new documents almost automatically into the right folders and assigns tags.
Why Self-Host Paperless-ngx?
Cloud document services like DocuWare or Adobe Scan cost €10-30/month and store your sensitive documents on external servers. Invoices, tax documents, contracts – do you really want to store those with a US provider?
With Paperless-ngx on a German VPS, your data stays GDPR-compliant in Germany. You only pay for the server (~€5/month) and have unlimited storage. Perfect for freelancers, self-employed, and privacy-conscious individuals.
| Aspect | Cloud Services | Paperless-ngx Self-Hosted |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | €10-30/month | ~€5/month (VPS) |
| Storage | Limited | Unlimited (VPS limit) |
| Privacy | US/EU Cloud | 100% local/DE |
| Automation | Partial | Complete |
Hardware Requirements
Paperless-ngx is moderately resource-hungry. OCR processing (Tesseract) needs CPU power but runs in the background. During import, CPU usage can spike to 100% temporarily.
NVMe storage significantly speeds up full-text search – with large archives (1000+ documents), you'll notice the difference immediately.
| Usage | RAM | CPU | Storage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal (~50/month) | 2 GB | 2 cores | 20 GB |
| Freelancer (~150/month) | 4 GB | 2-4 cores | 50 GB |
| Small Business (~300/month) | 6 GB | 4 cores | 100 GB |
| Enterprise (~500+/month) | 8+ GB | 4+ cores | 200+ GB |
Installation in 10 Minutes
Paperless-ngx runs best with Docker Compose. The official docker-compose.yml includes everything: PostgreSQL database, Redis for queues, Gotenberg for Office documents, and Tika for metadata extraction.
After startup, you'll access the web interface on port 8000. The first user automatically becomes admin. Documents can be added via drag & drop, email import, or scanner integration (via consume folder).
Our Recommendation
For personal use with ~50 documents/month, Hetzner CX22 with 4 GB RAM for about €4/month is sufficient.
Freelancers with higher document volumes should consider Contabo Cloud VPS S with 8 GB RAM for about €6/month.
For small businesses, we recommend Contabo Cloud VPS M with 16 GB RAM for about €10/month.