About PDFMeld

What this is

PDFMeld is a free set of tools for working with PDF files — merging, splitting, compressing, signing, redacting, converting, and more. There is no account to create, no email to hand over, no watermark on your output, and no daily limit.

Why it works differently

Most online PDF tools upload your document to their servers, process it there, and send the result back. That means a stranger's infrastructure briefly holds your contract, your medical record, or your passport scan — and you have to take their word for what happens to it.

We built this the other way around. The great majority of our tools run entirely inside your browser using WebAssembly. Your file is opened, processed, and saved without ever being transmitted. We do not receive it, so we could not read, retain, or leak it even if we wanted to.

This is not a promise you have to trust. Open your browser's Network tab while using a tool and you will see no upload. Or load the page, disconnect from the internet, and watch it keep working.

Where we are honest about the limits

Seven tools do need a server: converting to and from Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, plus capturing a web page as a PDF. Faithfully rendering Office formats requires a document engine that browsers simply do not have. For those tools your file is uploaded, converted, returned, and deleted immediately. We list exactly which tools those are in our Privacy Policy rather than burying it.

How it stays free

Because your device does the work, running this service costs us very little — there is no per-file server cost to recover. Advertising covers hosting for the parts that do need a server. That is the whole business model; there is no premium tier holding features hostage and no plan to sell data we do not collect.

Built with care where it matters

Some operations are easy to get subtly, dangerously wrong. Redaction is the clearest example: drawing a black box over text in most editors leaves the words underneath, fully recoverable — which is how redaction failures make the news. Our redaction rebuilds the affected pages so the hidden text is genuinely gone, and we test that it stays gone.

Get in touch

Found a bug, or a PDF that breaks a tool? Those reports are genuinely useful — please contact us.