Comparison
A free iLovePDF alternative that never uploads your document
If you landed here you probably asked some version of: is there a free tool like iLovePDF that doesn't send my PDF to somebody's server? Yes — our PDF tools do the work inside your browser tab, using JavaScript running on your own machine. The document is read, changed and saved locally. It is never uploaded, there is no account, and there is nothing to pay.
That is a real difference and it is the whole pitch. It is also a narrow one. On several jobs iLovePDF is simply better than us, and this page says exactly where, because a comparison that claims we win everywhere would be worth nothing to you.
Competitor details were read from their own public pages on 2026-07-31. Prices and free-tier limits change often — check theirs before you decide.
| What matters | BrowseryTools | iLovePDF |
|---|---|---|
| Where your document is processed | In the browser tab, on your machine. The PDF is parsed and rewritten locally and is never sent anywhere. You can confirm it yourself in your browser's network panel.Edge: BrowseryTools | Through their web service. Their own homepage positions the separate Desktop app as the way to "work offline" and "manage documents locally, with no internet", which is what the browser tools are not. |
| Price and account | Free, with no plan and no sign-in. We never ask for an email or a card, because there is no server bill to cover.Edge: BrowseryTools | A free tier, plus a Premium subscription listed at $7/month billed monthly or $48/year, and a custom-priced Business plan for 25+ users (prices read from their pricing page on the date shown above). |
| Limits on a free file | No plan quota and no task counter. The real ceiling is your device: everything is held in memory on the page's main thread, so a very large scan can make the tab unresponsive or run out of memory on a phone. | Free-tier caps published per tool — file-size limits in the region of 100 MB to 400 MB depending on the tool, and task allowances that also vary by tool.Depends on the job |
| PDF compression quality | Rasterizing only. Every page is re-encoded as a JPEG image, so the text layer is destroyed — you cannot select, copy or search the result and a screen reader can no longer read it. On a lean text PDF the output can come out larger than the input. | Three levels are offered — Extreme, Recommended and Less compression. Their pages name the levels but do not describe the method, so we make no claim about what their output preserves.Edge: iLovePDF |
| Scanned pages and OCR | Our Image to Text tool runs Tesseract locally and accepts PDFs, so scanned pages can be read on-device. It is an open-source engine, not a hosted one, and it downloads its language data from the tessdata CDN the first time you pick a language. | OCR is a paid feature. Their pricing page lists PDF to Word (OCR) and PDF to Excel (OCR) as Premium, and the plan includes what they call advanced OCR for scanned documents.Edge: iLovePDF |
| Batch work and automation | One file at a time, by hand, in a tab. No API, no queue, no watch folder, no command line. | A REST API (iLoveAPI), a desktop app their homepage describes as batch editing documents locally with no limits, and iOS and Android apps.Edge: iLovePDF |
| Signatures | Our Sign PDF tool draws your signature onto the page and saves the file. That is a picture of a signature — there is no identity check, no audit trail, and no way to send a document to someone else for signing. | A Sign PDF tool plus a separate e-signing product, and their Premium tier advertises requesting secure e-signatures from other people.Edge: iLovePDF |
Where iLovePDF is genuinely better
- OCR on scanned documents. This is the clearest gap. A photographed or scanned page has no text in it at all, and turning it into searchable, selectable text is the single most valuable thing a PDF service does. iLovePDF sells that as a Premium feature; we can only offer a local Tesseract run through a separate tool, which is a different and generally weaker engine than a tuned server pipeline.
- A REST API. iLovePDF runs iLoveAPI as a separate developer product, so PDF work can be automated from a backend, a cron job or a CI pipeline. We have no API of any kind and no plan for one — every one of our tools requires a human with a browser open.
- Batch processing without babysitting. Their desktop app is described on their own homepage as batch editing and managing documents locally with no limits. Ours processes one file at a time on the page's main thread, with no queue and no cancel button, and a long job will freeze the tab while it runs.
- Real e-signature workflows. Sending a document to a counterparty, tracking whether they signed, and keeping an audit trail is a product, not a feature. We draw a signature image onto a page. If the signature has to hold up to scrutiny, we are not the tool.
- Native mobile and desktop apps. They ship iOS and Android apps and a desktop app. We are a website, and on a phone the memory ceiling is genuinely low — a big scanned PDF can simply fail in a mobile browser tab.
- Formats and conversions we do not have at all. Their paid tier lists PDF/A conversion, PDF to Excel, PDF translation and an AI summarizer. We have none of those.
Where our tools fall short
- Compress PDF rasterizes and nothing else. Once compressed, the text cannot be selected, copied or searched, screen readers can no longer read the document, and links, form fields and annotations are gone. There is no option to keep the text layer and no OCR to put one back.
- On a lean text or vector PDF, our compressor's output can be larger than the input — a page of type becomes a full-page photograph. The tool still reports that as a success with a negative reduction percentage, so check the before and after numbers rather than assuming it worked.
- Merge PDF copies pages only. A source file's bookmarks and outline, its document-level form definition and any embedded attachments are not rebuilt, so interactive forms may stop working. Password-protected PDFs cannot be opened at all and are reported with a generic "Invalid PDF file" message rather than saying a password is the problem.
- Everything runs on the page's main thread with the whole file in memory and no progress bar. Hundreds of megabytes of scans can make the tab unresponsive or run out of memory, especially on a phone or a low-RAM laptop.
- Your document is never uploaded — but that is not the same as nothing leaving your device. Our OCR tool downloads Tesseract language data from the tessdata CDN the first time you use a language, and our AI tools fetch model files from a CDN on first run. There is also no service worker, so the site does not work offline.
Which one should you use?
Use our tools when the job is small and specific and the file is sensitive: merging a few PDFs, rotating pages, pulling a page range out, turning photos into a PDF, or squeezing a scan under an upload limit. Nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and it costs nothing.
Do not use our compressor on a text document you still need to search. It will flatten your PDF into pictures and may even make it bigger. That is the case where a server-side tool that recompresses the embedded images and leaves the text layer alone is doing something we genuinely cannot do.
And if you need OCR on scanned pages, an API, unattended batch processing, or a signature workflow with an audit trail, pay for a service. Those are not near-misses for us — we simply do not have them.
The tools this compares
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free alternative to iLovePDF that doesn't upload my files?
Yes. Our PDF tools run entirely inside your browser tab — the file is read and rewritten by JavaScript on your own machine and is never sent to a server. There is no account and no payment. You can verify it by opening your browser's network panel while you use a tool.
Will a PDF compressed with your tool still be searchable?
No. Our compressor rasterizes every page into a JPEG image, which destroys the text layer. The result cannot be selected, copied or searched, and screen readers cannot read it. If you need the text to survive, use a server-side compressor that recompresses embedded images instead.
Can you OCR a scanned PDF?
Partly. Our separate Image to Text tool accepts PDFs and runs the open-source Tesseract engine locally on your machine. It is a genuinely useful fallback, but it is a different engine from a tuned hosted OCR pipeline and it downloads its language data from a CDN the first time you pick a language.
Is there a file size limit?
There is no plan quota, but there is a practical one. Files are held in memory and processed on the page's main thread, so very large documents can make the tab unresponsive or fail outright, particularly on a phone.
Do you have an API?
No. Every tool needs a person with a browser. If you need to automate PDF work from a server or a build pipeline, a hosted API is the right choice.
Are you affiliated with iLovePDF?
No. This is an independent comparison written from their publicly published pages on the date shown above. We are not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by them.
Other comparisons
Sources
iLovePDF is a trademark of its owner. This is an independent comparison. We are not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by them.