Local vs upload-based file tools
Almost every free file converter uploads your document to a server. A browser can do the same work without sending anything. Here is the actual difference, including where the upload approach still wins.
The comparison
| Runs in your browser | Uploads to a server | |
|---|---|---|
| Who sees your file | Only you | The operator, plus anyone with access to their storage |
| Time cost | Processing only | Upload + queue + processing + download |
| File size limit | Your device’s memory | Whatever keeps their bandwidth bill down |
| Works offline | Yes, once the page has loaded | No |
| Account required | No | Often, for anything beyond the basics |
| Heavy operations | Limited by your hardware | Can use far more memory and CPU than a phone has |
| Exotic formats | Only what browsers support | Can run any software they like |
Where upload-based tools genuinely win
Two cases, and they are real rather than concessions for the sake of appearing balanced.
The first is heavy work on weak hardware. A server with 32 GB of RAM can restructure a 2 GB PDF that would exhaust a phone. Browser tabs have a memory ceiling, and a large enough job will hit it.
The second is unusual formats. A server can run a full office suite or a decades old codec. A browser is limited to what it and WebAssembly can do, which covers the common cases well and the obscure ones not at all. Real PDF compression is one such gap here, because every high-quality engine that does it is licensed AGPL.
How to tell which kind you are using
You do not have to trust anyone’s claim, including ours. Open your browser’s developer tools with F12, switch to the Network tab, and run the tool. If your file is being uploaded you will see a request whose size matches it. If nothing of that size appears, the work is happening locally.
A quicker heuristic: drop your connection after the page has loaded. A local tool keeps working. An upload-based one cannot.
The tools here
All 52 of these run locally, with no upload, account or watermark:
- Put a border or padding around a picture — Frame a photo, or pad it out to a square or 16:9 without cropping anything. Free, no signup, and the whole picture is kept whatever shape you ask for.
- Convert AVIF to JPG — Convert AVIF images to JPG free, with no signup and no watermark. Your browser already decodes AVIF, so no codec is downloaded and nothing is uploaded.
- Convert AVIF to PNG — Convert AVIF to lossless PNG free, with transparency preserved and no watermark. Ideal when the file is heading into an editor rather than onto a page.
- Make a barcode you can print and scan — Generate Code 128 or EAN-13 barcodes free as PNG, with the check digit worked out for you. No signup, and your product data never leaves the browser.
- Adjust brightness and contrast — Lift a dark photo or flatten a harsh one with two sliders, free and in your browser. No account, no upload, and the original file is never overwritten.
- Compress a JPG — Shrink JPG photos free with MozJPEG, the encoder Mozilla built for the web. Typically 20 to 40 percent smaller, with no watermark and no daily limit.
- Compress a scanned PDF — Shrink a scanned PDF free, with no signup and no file-size cap. Straight about what re-encoding does to text, and it refuses to do it quietly.
- Compress a PNG losslessly — Shrink PNG files free without changing a single pixel, using oxipng. No colour quantisation, no watermark, and the file never leaves your browser.
- Crop an image — Drag a box over your photo to crop it, free and with no account. Works with the keyboard too, and the picture is never uploaded anywhere.
- Crop the margins off a PDF — Trim white space from the edges of PDF pages free, with no signup. Useful before printing a scan, and reversible because nothing is deleted.
- Get the text out of a Word file — Extract the text from a .docx free, as plain text or as Markdown with headings kept. No Word licence, no account, and no upload of your document.
- Turn a spreadsheet into a printable PDF — Convert an .xlsx into a PDF of ruled tables free, one section per sheet. No Excel licence, no watermark, and the workbook stays in your browser.
- See what a photo says about itself — Read the camera, lens, settings, timestamp and GPS coordinates stored inside a JPEG. Free, no signup, and the photo is read in your browser, not uploaded.
- Make a favicon from a picture — Turn a logo into favicon.ico plus the PNG sizes iOS and Android ask for. Free, no account, and the image is converted in your browser rather than uploaded.
- Turn a picture black and white — Make any photo greyscale in your browser, free and with no account. Pick the weighting film and photo editors use, or the flat average a naive filter gives.
- Make a PDF from a folder of images — Drop in a mixed pile of JPG, PNG and WebP images and get one PDF, free and with no file limit. Everything is converted inside your own browser.
- Turn images into a PDF — Combine JPG photos into a single PDF free, with no page limit or watermark. Baseline JPEGs are embedded byte for byte, so no quality is lost.
- Convert JPG to PNG — Convert JPG photos to lossless PNG free, with no signup and no watermark. Useful when a tool refuses JPEG or you need to edit without further loss.
- Convert JPG to WebP — Convert JPG photos to WebP free and cut page weight without a visible quality drop. No account, no watermark, and nothing is uploaded.
- Merge PDF files — Combine several PDFs into one file free — no page limit, no watermark, no signup. Text stays selectable, and nothing is ever uploaded.
- Generate passwords that never leave this page — Strong random passwords generated free by your own browser from the operating system's cryptographic source. Nothing is transmitted, logged or stored.
- Edit a PDF in your browser — Add text, draw, sign, highlight, insert shapes and reorder pages free — no signup, no watermark. The document opens in your browser and is never uploaded.
- Edit or clear a PDF's metadata — See what a PDF says about its title, author and origin, then rewrite or clear it. Free, no signup, and the document is opened in your browser.
- Put several PDF pages on one sheet — Fit two or four pages onto every printed sheet, free and with no signup. Halves or quarters the paper for handouts, and the text stays sharp.
- Add page numbers to a PDF — Number the pages of a finished PDF free, skipping the cover and starting wherever you need. No watermark is added and nothing is uploaded.
- Convert PDF pages to JPG — Turn each page of a PDF into a JPG image free, with no page limit. Choose the resolution, pick a range, and download everything as one zip.
- Convert PDF pages to PNG — Render PDF pages as lossless PNG images free, with no signup. Sharper on text and line art than JPG, and considerably larger. Nothing is uploaded.
- Extract the text from a PDF — Pull the words out of a PDF as plain text, free and instantly. Honest about why this is not a Word document and what a scanned file cannot give you.
- Get the text of a PDF into an editable Word file — Turn the words of a PDF into a real .docx you can edit, free and with no signup. The text comes across; the layout does not, because a PDF never stored it.
- Convert PNG to JPG — Convert PNG images to JPG free, with no watermark and no daily limit. Pick the quality and the colour that replaces transparency. Nothing is uploaded.
- Put PNG images into a PDF — Turn PNG screenshots and diagrams into a PDF free, without losing a pixel. Transparency is kept, nothing is re-compressed, and no file leaves your browser.
- Convert PNG to WebP — Convert PNG images to WebP free with transparency intact. Logos and screenshots get much smaller without the white box JPEG leaves behind. No signup.
- Get the text out of a PowerPoint deck — Extract every slide's text from a .pptx free, with speaker notes if you want them. No PowerPoint licence, no account, and no upload of your deck.
- Put a password on a PDF — Encrypt a PDF with a password free, with no signup. The password never leaves your machine, and the page is honest about which restrictions actually hold.
- Make a QR code that stays yours — Type a link, a message or a Wi-Fi password and get a free QR code as PNG or SVG. No account, no expiry, no tracking redirect, and nothing is uploaded.
- Draw random numbers, fairly — Pick numbers in any range free, with or without repeats, drawn from your browser's cryptographic random source. No server, no seed, no hidden bias.
- Strip the metadata out of a photo — Take the GPS, camera and timestamp data out of a JPEG or PNG without re-encoding it. Free, no upload, and the picture itself comes back byte for byte.
- Delete pages from a PDF — Remove unwanted pages from a PDF free, with no page limit or watermark. Blank scans, cover sheets and duplicates go without re-uploading the file.
- Put PDF pages in a new order — Rearrange a document by writing the order you want, like 3,1,2. Free, no watermark, no signup, and the file is rebuilt inside your own browser.
- Resize an image — Change an image's dimensions free, with no signup and no watermark. Set a width, a height or both, keep the aspect ratio, and pick the output format.
- Rotate or flip an image — Turn a photo by 90, 180 or 270 degrees, or mirror it, free and instantly. Handles the EXIF orientation tag correctly, so nothing rotates twice.
- Rotate PDF pages — Turn sideways or upside-down PDF pages the right way up, free and with no watermark. Rotation is lossless and the document is never uploaded.
- Split a PDF — Extract pages from a PDF free, either as one file or as a separate file per page. No signup, no watermark, no page limit, and no upload.
- Compare two texts and see what changed — Paste two versions and get a line-by-line report of what was added and removed. Free, no account, and the comparison runs in your browser, not on a server.
- Remove a password from a PDF — Take the password off a PDF you can already open, free and with no account. You supply the password; nothing is uploaded and nothing is guessed.
- Watermark a photo with your own text — Stamp your name, a URL or a notice across a picture, free and with no signup. Choose the corner, the size, the angle and how faint it sits.
- Watermark a PDF — Stamp DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL or a name diagonally across every page of a PDF, free. Honest about what a watermark does and does not prevent.
- Convert WebP to JPG — Turn WebP images into JPG files that open anywhere, free and instantly. Useful when an app, printer or older program refuses to accept a WebP file.
- Convert WebP to PNG — Convert WebP images to PNG free, keeping transparency and adding no watermark. Expect the file to grow — PNG stores every pixel exactly, artefacts included.
- Count words, characters and reading time — Paste text and see words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and reading time update as you type. Free, no account, and nothing is uploaded or stored.
- Turn a Word document into a PDF — Convert a .docx into a PDF free, keeping paragraphs, headings and lists. No Word licence, no account, no watermark and no upload of your document.
- Convert an Excel sheet to CSV — Turn an .xlsx worksheet into CSV free, with a choice of separator. No Excel licence, no signup, and the formulas become their results.
More detail on how they are built, and what they cannot do, is on the about page. We keep no copies because we never receive any — see the privacy policy.