PDF

Utilities that read and rewrite PDF documents — combining, splitting, reordering, encrypting, converting. Almost all of them work by uploading your file to a server; these do the same work in your browser, which removes the limits that exist to ration server time.

Fifteen PDF tools that run in your browser. Your document is never uploaded, so there is no queue, no two-files-a-day cap and no account.

Some conversions cannot honestly be done client-side. Those are listed below with the specific reason, rather than left for you to discover after choosing a file.

Every mainstream PDF service works the same way: you upload, a server processes, you download, and the file sits on someone else’s disk for an hour or a day. That architecture is what creates the limits — two files a day, twenty to a batch, a megabyte ceiling, an account before you can do it twice — because each operation costs the provider machine time.

These run on your processor. There is nothing to meter, so nothing is metered, and your contract or medical letter does not leave the device it is on. Verify it by opening the network tab, or by disconnecting entirely.

• No file count, because there is nothing to ration

  Each operation costs this site nothing, so there is no reason to cap it. The practical ceiling is your own memory, which for text documents runs into thousands of pages.

  iLovePDF allows 25 files per merge; Smallpdf gates batching behind a subscription; CloudConvert counts a merge against ten conversions a day.

• Encrypted documents are decrypted, not worked around

  Enter the password once and the pages are decoded properly before anything is copied. Protection goes back on with AES-256, the cipher the current specification names, and RC4 is refused rather than offered as a compatibility option.

  The widely used open-source PDF library cannot decrypt at all: its flag for handling encrypted documents lets a broken file through rather than decoding it, and merging one produces blank pages with no error.

• Compression that reports the real number

  What is permissively available is structural — repacking object tables, compressing streams, dropping unreferenced objects. On a document produced by current software that saves close to nothing, and on a very small one it can cost a few bytes. The figure is shown either way, including when it is negative.

  Genuine content-aware downsampling requires Ghostscript or MuPDF, both AGPL-3.0; shipping either to a browser would oblige this entire site to that licence.

• The refusals are published, not discovered

  Six operations are named on the hub with the specific reason each one is absent, so you can go elsewhere before choosing a file rather than after uploading one.

  PDF to Word, Office to PDF, HTML to PDF, AI summarising, content-aware compression, and removing a password you do not have.

1. 1

   Work out which operation you actually need

   Reordering is Organise PDF, not a split. Hiding a margin note is not cropping. Naming the operation correctly is most of the work, and it is where the wrong-tool mistakes happen.

2. 2

   Deal with encryption before anything else

   If the document asks for a password, unlock it first. Every later operation is simpler on a decrypted file, and a merger that papers over encryption produces blank pages rather than an error.

3. 3

   Check the pages against the thumbnails

   Split states the pages it will produce before it runs, and Organise labels every thumbnail with its position in the output. Check those against the previews rather than trusting remembered page numbers.

4. 4

   Leave the destructive step until last

   Deleting pages, stripping metadata and flattening are one-way. Run them at the end and on a copy, so an earlier mistake does not cost you the original.

5. 5

   Confirm nothing left the device

   Open the network panel and watch the request count while you work, or disconnect entirely. A privacy claim you can check in ten seconds is worth more than one you have to take on trust.

• You have several documents to combine

  Merge PDF

  No file limit, and encrypted documents are decrypted properly rather than merged into blank pages.

• You need part of a document

  Split PDF

  By range, by page, or by output size, with a live preview of exactly which pages survive.

• You are sending something confidential

  Protect PDF

  AES-256 applied in your browser, so the password never reaches us or anyone else.

• A scan came out sideways

  Rotate PDF

  Rotation accumulates correctly and wraps to 0-359, which fixes the files that look upright in one reader and sideways in another.

• The file is too large to email

  Compress PDF

  Lossless repacking, or an optional rasterise, with the real saving reported — including when it is nearly nothing.

• You need the words out of it

  PDF to text

  The text in reading order, honestly labelled as text rather than as a Word document.

• AES-256

  is the cipher specified in ISO 32000-2; RC4, which some tools still default to, has been considered broken for years and is refused here.

• Genuine content-aware compression requires Ghostscript or MuPDF, both AGPL-3.0 — shipping either to a browser would oblige this entire site to that licence.

• The widely used open-source PDF library cannot decrypt: its flag for handling encrypted documents lets a broken file through rather than decoding it, and merging one produces blank pages with no error.

• PDF geometry is measured in PostScript points at 72 to the inch, which makes an A4 page 595 × 842 points.

• 9 tools

  Colour

  Check it, fix it, extract it, turn it into a system.

• 4 tools

  CSS

  Gradients and surfaces as CSS you paste, measured as they will paint.

• 3 tools

  Typography

  Pairing, scale, readability and font identification — measured the same way.

• 3 tools

  Branding

  Marks, codes and sheets — the things that carry the brand.

• 6 tools

  Writing

  Resumes, cover letters, word counts and interface copy, held to the same standard as the pixels.

• 3 tools

  Video & audio

  Trim, extract and convert — decoded by your own browser, not a server.

• 14 tools

  Converters

  Change a file’s format or size, or a length’s unit, without anything leaving your device.