PDF tools that never upload your documents

Seven tools for the things PDFs make difficult. All of them open your file in the browser, do the work on your own device, and give you a new file back. There is no upload, no account, no watermark on the output, and no page limit dressed up as a free tier.

PDFs are the format people most often need to edit and least often want to hand to a stranger. Contracts, bank statements, medical forms, signed agreements, tax paperwork. The usual free PDF site takes all of that onto a server, and its privacy policy is the only thing standing between your document and whoever runs it.

These tools never send the document anywhere. The page downloads a PDF engine from this domain the first time you open a file, and everything after that happens locally. The privacy page lists each engine, its size, and exactly what triggers the download.

The tools

• Merge PDF Combine several PDFs into one, in the order you choose. Pages carry over; bookmarks and fillable form fields do not.
• Split PDF Extract pages, cut custom ranges, chop every N pages, or burst a file into one PDF per page. You work by page number.
• Image to PDF Turn JPG, PNG and WebP images into a single PDF with your choice of page size and orientation.
• PDF to JPG Render pages to JPG or PNG at 1x, 2x or 3x. Once a page is an image the text stops being selectable.
• PDF to Text Pull the real text layer out where there is one, and fall back to OCR for scans. The two paths give very different accuracy.
• Watermark PDF Stamp text or a logo across every page or a range, with control over position, opacity, rotation and tiling.
• Sign PDF Draw or type a signature and place it on the page. This is a visual signature, not a cryptographic one.

Two things these tools will not pretend

A watermark is not protection. It is page content, and anyone with a PDF editor can take it off again. That is true of every watermark tool, including the paid ones, and it is worth knowing before you rely on one.

A drawn signature is not a digital signature. Sign PDF places an image of your signature onto the document. It does not attach a certificate, verify who you are, or make the file tamper-evident. For most everyday paperwork that is exactly what is wanted, but if someone has asked for a qualified electronic signature, this is not that.

What happens to the original

Nothing. Every tool here builds a new document and leaves the file on your disk untouched, so a bad crop or a misplaced signature costs you nothing but another go.

One side effect is worth knowing: because these tools construct a fresh document rather than editing yours in place, the source file's document properties do not carry into the output. If you were relying on that metadata, keep the original.

Other categories

• Image tools for compressing, resizing, converting and cleaning photos.
• Document tools for resumes and cover letters.
• All tools if you would rather see everything at once.