About PDF Toolkit
PDF Toolkit is a free collection of more than 40 tools for working with PDF documents — merging, splitting, editing, converting, compressing, and securing them — that run entirely inside your web browser. There is no upload, no account, and no watermark. This page explains what the project is, why it works the way it does, and who is behind it.
What PDF Toolkit is
Most people only need to do something with a PDF occasionally: combine a few files before emailing them, shrink a document so it fits an upload limit, sign a contract, or pull a couple of pages out of a long report. The usual options are frustrating — desktop apps you have to install and pay for, or websites that make you upload your private documents to a stranger’s server, wait in a queue, and dodge a wall of ads before letting you download the result.
PDF Toolkit takes a different approach. Every core tool runs in your browser using your own device’s processing power. You open a file, the work happens locally, and you download the result — the document never travels to a server. It is fast because there is no round trip, private because nothing is uploaded, and free because running in your browser costs us nothing to serve.
Private by design, not by promise
Plenty of sites promise they will delete your files “within an hour.” We took privacy out of the realm of promises entirely: the PDF utilities never send your document anywhere in the first place. Merging, splitting, cropping, compressing, rotating, watermarking, signing, redacting, and every other utility tool read your file directly in the browser and write the result there too.
The one exception is the AI features — chat with a PDF, summarize, translate, and the other AI tools. Those need a large language model, which cannot run on your device, so your selected text is sent directly from your browser to the AI provider you choose (Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, or Google’s Gemini) using your own API key. We are only a pass-through: we never see, store, or proxy your key or your documents. You can read the full details in our Privacy Policy.
What you can do here
The toolkit is organized around the jobs people actually bring to a PDF:
- Organize — merge, split, rotate, reorder, delete, extract, and number pages, or interleave two scans with Alternate Mix.
- Edit & annotate — add text, drawings, and highlights, fill form fields, crop pages, edit metadata, or have a document read aloud.
- Convert — turn Word, Excel, images, and text into PDF, or export a PDF to JPG, Word, or plain text; run OCR to make a scan searchable.
- Optimize — compress a file to fit an upload limit, or convert it to grayscale to save ink before printing.
- Secure — password-protect, unlock, sign, or permanently redact a document.
- AI — chat with a document, summarize it, translate it, generate study questions or flashcards, or extract structured data from invoices and receipts.
You can browse the whole lineup on the all tools page or jump straight into chatting with a PDF.
How it stays free
Every tool is free to use, with no limits, no watermarks, and no sign-up. Because the utilities run on your device, they cost almost nothing to host, and we keep the project running with unobtrusive advertising and by never charging for the AI features — those are bring-your-own-key, so you only ever pay your chosen AI provider directly, never us. There is no paid tier that unlocks “real” functionality: what you see is everything, for everyone.
Who built it
PDF Toolkit is built and maintained by Rajkumar V, a software engineer who wanted a set of PDF tools that respected the privacy of the documents being worked on. It started as a single “chat with a PDF” experiment and grew into the full suite you see today. If you have found a bug, want a tool that isn’t here yet, or just want to say hello, the contact page lists every way to get in touch.