Frequently asked questions

No built-in limit. We've merged files totaling 130 MB and documents with 10,000 pages in a single browser tab without errors. The real ceiling is whatever memory your device and browser have available, not a number we impose.

For scanned or photo-heavy PDFs, yes — typically 70–98% smaller depending on the quality preset. For text-only PDFs, compressing usually makes the file bigger, because Compress works by converting pages into JPEG images. If your file looks like a poor fit, the app tells you before you compress it — Compress is meant for scans and photos, not text documents.

Yes. Resize re-embeds each page as vector content rather than an image, so text stays selectable and searchable in the result. Compress is the only one of the four tools that turns pages into pixels.

Yes. Each page's own orientation is matched automatically: a landscape page resized to "A4" comes out as a landscape A4 page, not squeezed into a portrait page with wide margins. A document that mixes portrait and landscape pages resizes each page correctly on its own.

Because whatever you used before probably only rotated the on-screen view, not the file. Chrome, Edge, and most built-in PDF viewers have a rotate button that changes what you're looking at, not the document itself — close and reopen the file and it snaps back. Rotate actually rewrites the page's rotation data in the file, so it stays rotated in every viewer, every time you open it, not just the tab you rotated it in.

No, rotations add up. Rotating a page 90° and then rotating the result another 90° gives you 180°, not a reset back to 90°.

Yes — the Split tool. Type a page range like "1-3, 5, 8-10" and either extract just those pages into a new PDF, or delete them and keep the rest. It works on one file at a time, since a page range only makes sense against a single document.

Yes — the Protect tool does both. "Add password" encrypts the file with a real password (AES-128) that's required to open it in any PDF viewer. "Remove password" unlocks a file you already know the password for. Either way, the password itself is only ever used inside your browser tab — it's never sent anywhere.

No — same trade-off as Compress. The underlying library this app uses has no way to decrypt an encrypted PDF directly, so Remove Password works by rendering each page as an image and rebuilding an unprotected PDF from those images. The password is gone and the file opens normally, but the text is no longer selectable or searchable. Add Password has no such trade-off — it keeps your file exactly as it was, just encrypted.

Yes — the Redact tool. Draw a box over anything you want removed, and only the pages you mark get rasterized to an image on export, so the text and vectors underneath are genuinely gone, not just covered by a black box sitting on top of live, still-selectable text. Pages you don't mark are left completely untouched — still vector, still selectable. It works on one PDF at a time, since the editor is page-by-page.

Yes — the Fill & Sign tool. Click "+ Text" to drop in a text field anywhere on the page (drag it into place, type, resize the font), and "+ Signature" to add one either by drawing it with your mouse or finger or by typing your name in a choice of handwriting-style fonts. The rest of the page is untouched — this tool never rasterizes anything, so any text that was already selectable in your PDF stays exactly as selectable after export. One PDF at a time.

That depends on your jurisdiction and what the document is for, not on this tool — a typed or drawn image stamped onto a PDF is the same basic mechanism as most e-signature products, but this app makes no legal claim about it and adds no audit trail, certificate, or identity verification. For anything where that matters — contracts, official filings — check what your specific document or counterparty requires before relying on it.

Yes — the "Compare" tool. Drop an original and a revised PDF and it shows a single redlined view of the extracted text: removed text struck through in red, added text underlined in green, and changed words highlighted within an otherwise-unchanged line rather than just marking the whole line different. It works on the text layer, so it needs both PDFs to have selectable text (run Make Searchable first on a scanned one), and it's an on-screen comparison only — no file is generated or downloaded.

Yes — the "Form Builder" tool. Drop a PDF, place text fields and checkboxes wherever you need them, give each one a name, mark any as required, then download. Unlike Fill & Sign, these become real AcroForm fields — the kind any PDF reader (Acrobat, Preview, Chrome's built-in viewer) recognizes as an actual fillable form, not flattened static text. Field names must be unique across the whole document; the tool checks this and tells you clearly if two fields clash before it lets you build.

Yes — the "Bates Numbering" tool. Drop a batch of PDFs, and it stamps a sequential number onto every page — continuing across all the files in the order you arrange them, the standard convention for legal discovery/disclosure — plus an optional "CONFIDENTIAL"/"DRAFT" stamp and a "Page X of Y" indicator per document. Each file stays its own separate document; only the numbering is continuous across them. A locked or corrupted file in the batch is skipped with a clear message rather than stopping the rest.

Yes — the "Smart Redaction" tool. Drop a batch of PDFs, choose which categories to look for (emails, phone numbers, card numbers, UK National Insurance numbers, US Social Security numbers, IP addresses), and it scans every page and lists what it found for you to review before anything is touched. Confirmed matches get redacted the same real way the manual Redact tool does — the page is rasterized so the text is actually gone, not just covered by a box. No account, no per-page or per-month cap, and batch processing many files at once is included rather than pushed into a separate paid app. Pattern-matching isn't perfect: it can occasionally miss something or flag a false positive, which is exactly why the review step exists rather than redacting automatically. Don't rely on it alone for a document where missing something has real consequences.

Yes, both directions. Images → PDF takes JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, or BMP files and turns each one into a page of a new PDF, in whatever order you arrange them. PDF → Images does the reverse: it renders every page of a PDF as an image (PNG or JPEG, your choice of resolution) and bundles them into a single .zip file.

Yes — the "Make Searchable" tool. It runs AI text recognition (OCR) on each page entirely in your browser, then rebuilds the page as an image with an invisible, searchable text layer positioned underneath — so the page looks identical but the text is now selectable, searchable, and copyable. English only for now. It's for scanned PDFs specifically; if your file's text is already selectable, running it through this tool just re-renders the page for no benefit.

It still works, but there's no reason to: every page gets re-rendered as an image and re-OCR'd regardless of whether it already had real, selectable text. The tool doesn't try to detect and skip pages that don't need it — for a normal (not scanned) PDF, this just re-does work for nothing rather than causing an error.

You'll get a clear message asking you to remove the password first, instead of a crash or a stuck spinner — use Protect's "Remove password" mode to actually do that, if you know the password. If it's one file among several, the rest of your batch is still processed.

You'll see a clear "couldn't read this file" message rather than a stuck spinner or a browser error.

No. Every tool here — merging, splitting, compressing, resizing, rotating, redacting, filling & signing, password-protecting, converting to/from images, and OCR — runs entirely inside your browser tab. Open your browser's Network tab while you use it and you'll see nothing go out except a one-time AI model download the first time you use Make Searchable (see the next question). The only other network request the app ever makes is to Stripe, and only when you choose to subscribe.

Your PDF is never uploaded anywhere — OCR runs using Tesseract.js, an engine that runs in your browser tab (a Web Worker + WebAssembly, not a server). The one honest exception to this app's usual zero-network-requests behavior: the first time you use it, your browser downloads the OCR engine and an English text-recognition model (around 15MB) from a couple of public CDNs, cached afterward so it only happens once — the same one-time download the Expense Tracker's receipt scanner already uses.

That's the idea. Most PDF tools upload your file to their server, process it there, and delete it afterward — you still have to trust them with the file, even briefly. PDF Toolkit never uploads it in the first place: every operation runs inside your own browser tab, so the file has nowhere to go. No account, no cloud storage, nothing to trust a third party with.

There's no account or login with us — but every tool now requires an active free trial, subscription, or lifetime purchase to run, so you'll go through Stripe Checkout first, which does ask for a card. That's the only information you'd ever give us, and it goes straight to Stripe, not to us.

Start with a 7-day free trial (card required, nothing charged until day 8), then it's £5/month for unlimited use across all fifteen tools — Merge, Split, Compress, Resize, Rotate, Protect, Redact, Fill & Sign, Images → PDF, PDF → Images, Compare, Form Builder, Bates Numbering, Smart Redaction, and Make Searchable — no per-file charges. Cancel anytime during the trial and you won't be charged at all. Prefer not to have a recurring charge? A one-time £25 lifetime purchase unlocks the same unlimited access, paid once, no trial needed, no recurring charges.

No. Stripe holds your card details but doesn't charge anything until the trial ends on day 8. Cancel any time before then from "Manage or cancel subscription" (shown once your trial is active) and you'll never be charged. We ask for a card up front because that's what makes the trial a real one — rather than a resettable browser counter, which is how the old one-free-action model worked.

Right after you subscribe, you'll see a one-time code (like 7K2Q-9XPL) — save it somewhere safe, since there's no account to log back into and get it again. Paste that code into the "Already subscribed?" box in the paywall on any other browser or device to unlock it there too. Each code works on up to 5 devices, which should cover your own phone, laptop, and a couple more. If you lose the code, or genuinely need more than 5, email pdftoolkit@icloud.com and we can help.

Click "Manage or cancel subscription" — it appears next to the subscribed badge once premium is unlocked in that browser. It opens Stripe's own billing portal, where you can see your next renewal date and cancel in a couple of clicks, no email needed. That link uses your license code, so it only works in a browser where you've already unlocked premium — if you can't get to one, email pdftoolkit@icloud.com and we'll cancel it for you.

No. None of the tools add a watermark, logo, or any other branding to your output — what you download is your own PDF (or image), processed exactly as you asked, with nothing added.

It should, though it hasn't been formally tested on lower-end mobile hardware yet. Compress, Remove Password, Redact, PDF → Images, and Make Searchable are the most demanding tools, since each decodes and re-renders at least some pages as images (Make Searchable also downloads a one-time ~15MB AI model on first use) — Merge, Split, Resize, Rotate, Add Password, and Images → PDF never re-render existing PDF pages, so they're lighter on the device. Fill & Sign shows a page preview the same way Redact does, but its export never re-renders pages — text and signatures are drawn straight onto the original vector page — so it's closer to the lighter group.