Free PDF Tools That Never Upload Your File
Merge, split, compress, rotate, extract, convert, watermark, redact, protect and compare PDFs. Every one runs inside your own browser — the document never leaves your device.
Start with the essentials
The four PDF jobs people come here for most often.
Which PDF tool do I need?
Some of these overlap and the names are not always obvious. Start here if you are not sure which one solves your problem.
| What you want to do | Use this | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Join several PDFs into one file | Merge PDF | Also accepts JPG, PNG and WEBP, adding each as its own page. |
| Break one PDF up by a rule | Split PDF | Every page, a range, every N pages, or odd and even. |
| Pull out a specific handful of pages | Extract Pages | Pick from thumbnails, keep together or one file per page. |
| Make the file smaller | Compress PDF | Presets, a percentage, or an exact target size in KB. |
| Fix a sideways or upside-down scan | Rotate PDF | Whole document or selected pages, plus reordering. |
| Turn PDF pages into image files | PDF to Images | PNG, JPEG, WebP or AVIF, by DPI, width or scale. |
| Turn photos or scans into a PDF | Images to PDF | JPG, PNG, WEBP and HEIC with page and margin control. |
| Save a web page or HTML as PDF | HTML to PDF | From a URL, pasted HTML or an uploaded file. |
| Permanently remove sensitive content | Redact PDF | Destroys the underlying text instead of covering it. |
| Stamp DRAFT or a logo across pages | Watermark PDF | Text, image or logo with tiling, opacity and ranges. |
| Require a password to open the file | Protect PDF | Open password plus print, copy and edit permissions. |
| Drop a password you already know | Remove Password | Needs the correct password — cannot crack an unknown one. |
| Stop a form being edited further | Flatten PDF | Burns fields and annotations in, then verifies the result. |
| See what changed between two versions | Compare PDFs | Text diff, pixel diff, page-level and layout comparison. |
Two names that mislead people. PDF Extract extracts pages, not text — and no tool here performs OCR, so a scanned PDF made only of images will not give you selectable text. For the text layer of a normal PDF, use the text tab inside PDF to Images.
All 14 PDF tools
Grouped by the job you are trying to get done.
Combine, split and reorganise
Convert to and from PDF
Shrink and finalise
Protect and redact
Why in-browser PDF tools matter
Most free PDF sites work by uploading your file to their servers, processing it there and giving you a download link. That is fine for a restaurant menu. It is a genuine problem for a signed contract, a salary slip, a bank statement, a medical report, an Aadhaar or PAN scan, or anything else you would not email to a stranger.
Every tool on this page takes the other approach. Your file is read with the browser's File API, processed on your own device with JavaScript and WebAssembly, and written straight back to your downloads folder. There is no upload step, no queue, no temporary copy on someone else's disk and no retention policy to read, because there is nothing to retain. It also means there is no file-count limit and no waiting for a server.
What that does and does not guarantee
Being honest about the edges matters more than a marketing claim, so here are the real caveats:
- Libraries load from a CDN. Most of these tools fetch their PDF engine from a public CDN the first time you use them. That is program code arriving, not your document leaving — but it does mean you need a connection to get started.
- Only Flatten PDF works fully offline. It registers a service worker and keeps working after the first visit. Other pages need that initial load.
- Your device sets the ceiling. Processing locally means a 200 MB scanned document is limited by your available memory, not by a server's. On a phone, large files will be noticeably slower.
- Flattening is not encryption. Flatten PDF makes a form non-editable and is honest that this is not a security measure. For confidentiality use Redact PDF, and to control access use Password Protect PDF.
Redacting versus hiding
This is the single most common and most costly PDF mistake. Drawing a black rectangle over a name in a PDF editor does not remove the name — the text object is still there, under the shape, and anyone can select it, copy it, or simply delete the rectangle. Organisations have leaked confidential material exactly this way.
Redact PDF works differently. Any page you mark is re-rendered to a raster, the redaction is burned into the pixels, and only that flattened image is written into a newly created document. The original text never reaches the output file. If the content must be unrecoverable, that is the tool to use — and note that pages you did not mark stay as normal selectable text unless you choose to rasterize everything.
PDF tools questions
The things people actually ask before trusting a PDF tool.
Are these PDF tools really free?
Yes. No account, no email, no trial, no page limit and no watermark on the output. There is no paid tier to upgrade to.
Do my PDF files get uploaded to a server?
No. Your file is read with the browser's File API and processed on your own device. There is no upload step and no server-side storage, which is what makes these tools safe for contracts, payslips and ID documents.
Which tool gets text out of a PDF?
Use the text tab inside PDF to Images, which reads the embedded text layer. Despite its name, PDF Extract extracts pages rather than text. Neither does OCR, so a purely scanned PDF will not produce text.
Can I recover a PDF password I have forgotten?
No. Remove PDF Password needs the correct password and verifies it before decrypting. It cannot crack, guess or bypass an unknown password — it exists to strip a password from a file you are authorised to open.
Is there a file size limit?
It varies: Merge accepts 50 MB per file and 150 MB total, Split and Rotate up to 100 MB, and Extract up to 300 MB. Compress has no fixed cap. Since processing is local, very large files are ultimately bounded by your device's memory.
Will merging or rotating reduce quality?
No. Merging copies pages across without re-encoding, and rotating only changes each page's orientation. Only Compress PDF deliberately re-encodes images, and even then text-only pages are copied losslessly.
Do these work on a phone?
Yes, in any modern mobile browser including Chrome and Safari. Large or image-heavy PDFs process more slowly on a phone because the work happens on your device rather than a server.
Can I use these tools offline?
Flatten PDF registers a service worker and works offline after the first visit. The others fetch their PDF library from a CDN on first use, so they need a connection to start — though your file still never leaves your device.
Do encrypted PDFs work in these tools?
Mostly no — Merge, Split, Rotate, Compress and Extract reject an encrypted PDF with a clear message. Run it through Remove PDF Password first, if you know the password, then use the tool you need.
Related tools outside PDF
Often needed alongside a PDF job.
Pick a tool and get started
Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for, and your document stays on your own machine from start to finish.