Free PDF tools that never upload your documents
Merge, compress and convert PDFs entirely in your browser. The documents people handle here are contracts, invoices and scans, so nothing is ever transmitted anywhere.
Merging, compressing and converting PDFs all run in your browser here, so contracts and scans are never uploaded. What a PDF contains decides what you can do with it: scans compress by 60-80% because they are page images, while text documents are already compact and barely shrink at all.
- Compress PDFCut PDF size for email without wrecking the scan
- Merge PDFCombine PDFs and drag pages into the order you want
- Split PDFPull out the pages you need, or break it into single pages
- Rotate PDFTurn sideways pages the right way up, and save it that way
- Add Page NumbersNumber the pages of a PDF, in the position and style you want
- Watermark PDFStamp DRAFT or CONFIDENTIAL across every page of a PDF
- Reorder PDF PagesReverse a back-to-front scan, or set the page order yourself
- Extract Images from PDFPull the embedded photographs out at their original resolution
- Image to PDFTurn photos into one PDF, in the order you choose
- PDF to ImageExport chosen pages as PNG or JPG at any resolution
Looking for something else? See all FileCrisp tools.
Why some PDFs shrink and others do not
There is one test that predicts your result better than any tool comparison: try to select a line of text. If individual words highlight, the document stores letters and positions, which is already compact — expect a few percent from compression and consider splitting it instead.
If nothing selects, or the whole page highlights as a block, it is a scan. Its size is page images, and compressing those routinely removes 60-80%.
Any tool claiming 90% on a text-only PDF is either rasterising it, which destroys the text, or overstating what it did.
What survives each operation
Merging copies pages without re-encoding, so nothing loses quality — but the bookmark outline and form field values live at document level and usually do not survive into the new file.
Compressing at a rasterising setting turns each page into an image, which is what produces the large savings on scans and what makes text unselectable afterwards. On a scan nothing is lost, because the text was never real text. On a contract it is a genuine loss, which is why a mode that preserves text exists.
A cryptographic digital signature validates the file's exact bytes, so any operation that rewrites the file invalidates it. A drawn or stamped signature is an image and survives.
Why this matters more for PDFs than for photos
Look at what people put through a PDF tool: contracts, invoices, bank statements, medical letters, tax returns, signed agreements. It is close to a complete financial and identity record.
Most free web PDF tools upload every one of those to a server to do the work. Merging and signing are page-object arithmetic that needs no server at all, so here the documents stay on your device and there is no retention policy to take on trust.
Common questions
Do I need Adobe Acrobat for any of this?
No. Merging, compressing, signing and converting all run in the browser with nothing to install. Acrobat Reader cannot merge at all — that is a paid feature of Acrobat Pro.
Are my documents uploaded?
No. Everything happens inside the browser tab and the results are written to your device. That is the whole reason the site works this way, given what people typically put through a PDF tool.
Why did my PDF barely get smaller?
Because it is a text document rather than a scan. Its size is font and layout data, which is already compact and has no redundant image detail to discard. Splitting it and sending it in parts is usually more effective.
Can I work with a password-protected PDF?
Not while it is encrypted. Encrypted files are rejected with a clear message rather than producing something broken. Remove the protection in the application that applied it, then try again.
Is there a page or file size limit?
No imposed limit. The ceiling is your device's memory, so a long document at high resolution may need a laptop rather than a phone.
Will merging keep my bookmarks and form fields?
Usually not. Both are document-level structures that reference pages, and those references do not survive being copied into a new file. Page content, text and in-page links do carry across.