Most PDF jobs are small: put three files together, send only the pages someone asked for, turn a phone photo of a form into a PDF, or get a page out as an image. These tools handle them inside your browser. The documents you open — contracts, statements, IDs — are never uploaded, and there is no account, watermark or page limit.
Which one to use
| You want to… | Tool |
|---|---|
| Make a PDF small enough to email or upload | Compress PDF |
| Get a PDF under a form's size limit, such as 200 KB | Compress PDF to 200KB |
| Combine several PDFs into one, in your order | Merge PDF |
| Break a PDF into pages, chunks or chapters | Split PDF |
| Cut scanned two-page spreads in half | Split PDF — Cut pages in half |
| Change the paper size to A4, US Letter or any size, with links and form fields intact | Resize PDF Pages |
| Cut off margins or part of a page, trim white margins automatically, or remove what you cut off for good | Crop PDF |
| Black out names, numbers or emails so the text is really gone, not just covered, and check the saved file | Redact PDF |
| Print a fold-and-staple booklet, even on a printer that only flips on the long edge or prints one side | PDF Booklet Maker |
| Turn sideways or upside-down pages the right way, permanently | Rotate PDF |
| Remove pages, blank pages or everything but a few pages | Delete PDF Pages |
| Put pages in a new order, reverse a file, or fix a double-sided scan | Reorder PDF Pages |
| Type into a fillable form, then keep it editable or flatten it | Fill PDF Form |
| Turn form answers and comments into ordinary page content, or fix a filled form that looks blank to others | Flatten PDF |
| Type on a form that has no fillable fields, tick boxes, or white out old text | Add Text to PDF |
| Add your signature, the date or initials to a PDF | Sign PDF |
| Put a password on a PDF so it cannot be opened without it | Protect PDF |
| Remove a PDF's password, or its lock on printing and copying | Unlock PDF |
| Turn photos or scans into a PDF | JPG to PDF |
| Turn iPhone HEIC photos into one PDF, at print or email size | HEIC to PDF |
| Save PDF pages as JPG images | PDF to JPG |
| Save PDF pages as small lossless PNGs, with a transparent background if you want | PDF to PNG |
| Get the original photos and graphics out of a PDF | Extract Images from PDF |
| Copy the text out as clean paragraphs, or find out which pages are scans | Extract Text from PDF |
| Make a color PDF black and white for printing, keeping text as text | PDF to Grayscale |
| Make a typed or signed PDF look like a scan, with text that stays searchable | Make PDF Look Scanned |
| Number the pages of a report, with roman numerals for the front matter | Add Page Numbers to PDF |
| Stamp a document DRAFT or CONFIDENTIAL, or put a logo behind the text | Add Watermark to PDF |
Pages are copied, not redrawn
Merging, splitting and deleting pages all work by copying the original page objects into a new file. Nothing is converted to an image or re-compressed, so text stays selectable and searchable, drawings stay sharp at any zoom, and photos inside the pages keep their original quality. Each new file contains only its own pages: taking one page from a long report gives you a small file, not the whole report in disguise.
Compress PDF is the one tool that changes what is inside the pages, and only the images: it measures how large each photo or scan is printed and resizes the ones that are sharper than needed. Pages are still never turned into pictures, so text stays selectable there too.
Links, bookmarks and passwords
Internal links — a table of contents, "see page 12" — are re-pointed to the right page of the new file, and links to pages you left out are switched off. Bookmarks follow their pages, so a split chapter keeps its sub-sections and a trimmed document keeps its outline. Password-protected PDFs can be opened in PDF to JPG if you know the password; the tools that copy pages need the protection removed first, because encrypted pages cannot be copied without decrypting them.
Adding a password works the other way round, and is best done last: fill, sign and compress the document first, then protect it. Encrypting a PDF that was printed from a browser or Word the ordinary way leaves its page count, page sizes and font names readable to anyone; Protect PDF packs them inside the encryption too, and checks that the result really refuses to open without the password.
Where a PDF's file size actually comes from
Compression results on PDFs look random until you know what is inside the file. We took two apart object by object: a photographed page was 100% image data, while a six-page text form (the IRS W-9) was 89% content streams and contained no images at all. Run both through the same compressor and the photographed page loses 96% of its size; the text form loses 13%.
The rule that follows is simple enough to apply before you click anything: a PDF is only as compressible as the pictures inside it. If you can select the text with your mouse, expect a small saving. If zooming in turns the letters into a blur and nothing is selectable, the page is a photograph and will shrink dramatically. The full breakdown, including which DPI setting to pick, is in where a PDF's file size comes from.
Nothing leaves your device
The best-known PDF websites process files on their servers and delete them afterwards. Every tool on this page reads and writes the PDF locally instead, so there is nothing to upload, nothing stored and no daily limit on how many documents you work with.