PDF Tools

10 free online tools — Merge, split, compress and convert PDF files free

These PDF tools work on the document inside your browser using pdf.js and pdf-lib — the same engines Firefox and many editors use — so your contract, statement or scan is never uploaded. Merge, split, compress, rotate, reorder, watermark, number pages, convert to images or text, and turn images into a PDF, all without an account.

Compress PDF Shrink a PDF so it fits an upload limit or an email attachment. Organize PDF Pages See every page as a thumbnail, drag them into order, drop the ones you don't need. PDF Page Numbers Number every page — bottom or top, plain or "Page X of Y", title page optionally skipped. PDF to Text Pull the text out of any PDF as clean paragraphs or line by line, copy it or save a .txt — nothing uploaded. Rotate PDF Turn every page — or just the sideways ones — the right way up. Watermark PDF Stamp CONFIDENTIAL, DRAFT or anything else across every page. Merge PDF Combine multiple PDFs into one document, in any order you choose. Split PDF Extract a page range, burst a PDF into single pages, or split every N pages. Image to PDF Turn photos and scans into a single PDF, one page per image. PDF to Image Render every PDF page as a JPG or PNG at up to 450 DPI.

The common jobs

What a PDF actually contains

A PDF is a container of drawing instructions: text placed at coordinates, images, vector shapes and fonts. That explains most of the surprises. Text extraction has to rebuild lines from positions, which is why some tools return word salad. A scanned PDF holds only a picture of the page, so there is no text to extract without OCR. Compression can only remove what is redundant — a PDF that is all photographs will not shrink losslessly, and one that is all text is already small.

Password-protected files

A PDF with an open password cannot be read by any tool until it is unlocked with that password, and these tools do not attempt to break encryption. Permission restrictions (no printing, no copying) are a different matter and are generally ignored by viewers; if a tool refuses a file, the open password is the usual reason.