Paid desktop PDF editor and OCR suite strong on scanned documents.
- Cost
- From £84.00 a year
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · iOS
- Your files
- Installed desktop application for Windows and macOS whose own help centre states recognition and processing run offline with documents stored locally. That statement covers the Windows program, not the Mac or iOS editions.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit ABBYY FineReader PDF Read the full record
Why this matches
Enterprise platform that converts documents into accessible formats including PDF/UA and Braille.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Web · Self-hosted
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit AccessibilityNow Read the full record
Why this matches
Adobe's PDF toolkit: free browser tools plus the paid Acrobat Pro desktop app.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · macOS
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: Acrobat desktop on Windows and macOS, and Acrobat Reader. On their servers: Acrobat online tools and Document Cloud services. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit Adobe Acrobat Read the full record
Why this matches
Cloud API that adds structure tags to PDFs at scale, as a first step towards accessibility.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- API
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Adobe PDF Accessibility Auto-Tag API Read the full record
Why this matches
Cloud API that extracts text, tables and structure from PDFs into JSON or Markdown.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- API
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Adobe PDF Extract API Read the full record
Why this matches
Commercial PDF SDK built on Adobe's own engine, sold and supported by Datalogics.
- Cost
- From £4,489.17 a year
- Platforms
- Windows · Linux · macOS · Self-hosted
- Your files
- An embeddable SDK that runs inside the application you build, on your own servers, desktops or containers. Datalogics operates no processing service in that path; the same company sells pdfRest, a hosted API, which is a separate product.
- Redaction
- Not checked
Visit Adobe PDF Library Read the full record
Why this matches
Free phone scanner that turns paper into searchable PDFs in Adobe's cloud.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- iOS · Android
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Adobe Scan Read the full record
Why this matches
Free Acrobat plug-in accessibility checker that tests a PDF against WCAG and PDF/UA and guides manual testing.
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- Windows
- Your files
- An Acrobat plug-in: the document is opened and checked inside your own copy of Acrobat, on your own machine. The form the vendor requires gates the download and collects contact details, not the document.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Allyant PDF Validator Read the full record
Why this matches
AWS API that reads text, forms, tables and signatures from uploaded documents.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Web · API
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Amazon Textract Read the full record
Why this matches
Commercial publishing formatter that lays out XSL-FO or CSS into print-quality PDF.
- Cost
- From £299.33 one-off
- Platforms
- Windows · Linux · macOS · Self-hosted
- Your files
- Installed software on Windows, Linux or macOS, or the vendor's Docker image in your own container. Antenna House operates no document processing service in that path.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Antenna House Formatter Read the full record
Why this matches
Apache FOP xmlgraphics.apache.org
Java XSL-FO formatter that turns XML formatting objects into PDF and print output.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Self-hosted
- Your files
- A Java application you run yourself. The formatting objects are read from your own filesystem and the output is written there; the Apache Software Foundation operates no processing service at all.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Apache FOP Read the full record
Why this matches
Long-standing Apache Java library and CLI suite for creating and manipulating PDFs.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A Java class library plus local Java applications. Parsing, rendering, encryption and signing all run in the local JVM.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Apache PDFBox Read the full record
Why this matches
Java toolkit that detects and extracts text and metadata from over a thousand file formats through one interface.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Linux · Windows · macOS · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A Java library, a command-line application and a server that you run yourself. There is no Apache-hosted document processing service, so a file parsed with Tika stays on your infrastructure. Note that 4.x can be configured to call vision-language-model APIs and remote OCR services; those are operator choices, not defaults, and they belong to the configuration rather than to the product.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Apache Tika Read the full record
Why this matches
The macOS PDF viewer and markup editor that ships with every Mac.
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- macOS · iOS
- Your files
- A local Apple application that opens files on the device. No account, no upload step, and no vendor service in the path.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit Apple Preview Read the full record
Why this matches
Commercial PDF SDK best known for WebViewer, its in-browser document SDK.
- Cost
- From £1,112.55 a year
- Platforms
- Web · Linux · iOS · Android · API · Self-hosted
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: Apryse SDK linked into an application, and the configured client-side WebViewer. On their servers: Server-backed viewers, hosted products and any configured service. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit Apryse Read the full record
Why this matches
Commercial PDF library and API for .NET, Java, C++ and Python, sold under a perpetual per-developer licence.
- Cost
- From £889.30 one-off
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · API · Self-hosted
- Your files
- An in-process library distributed as NuGet, Maven and pip packages, with no vendor service involved in processing. A hosted REST API exists as a separate cloud product and is not what this record describes.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit Aspose.PDF Read the full record
Why this matches
Free EU browser PDF toolkit, operated by the company behind the Nutrient SDK.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit AvePDF Read the full record
Why this matches
Free browser-based PDF/UA and WCAG accessibility checker that needs no installation.
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- Web
- Your files
- We observed a file upload to check.axes4.com.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit axesCheck Read the full record
Why this matches
Windows desktop accessibility checker and fixer for tagged PDFs, with PDF/UA machine checks and one-click repairs.
- Cost
- From £482.11 a year
- Platforms
- Windows
- Your files
- An installed Windows desktop application. The vendor states its AI-assisted checks run exclusively locally and access no cloud service or internet connection.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit axesPDF Read the full record
Why this matches
Microsoft's cloud OCR and document extraction API, with an on-premises container option.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · API · Self-hosted · Linux
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Azure AI Document Intelligence Read the full record
Why this matches
Construction-focused PDF markup and takeoff suite with genuine redaction, though the vendor's own sources disagree on which plans include it.
- Cost
- From £264.00 a year
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · macOS · iOS · Android
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: Revu on Windows. On their servers: Studio, cloud collaboration and browser or mobile companion access. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit Bluebeam Revu Read the full record
Why this matches
borb borbpdf.com
Dual-licensed pure-Python library for creating and manipulating PDFs, with an automatic page-layout engine and no non-Python dependencies.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A Python library that processes files inside the calling process, so documents stay local. One nuance belongs with that verdict: borb sends usage telemetry by default — read and write events posted to a vendor endpoint, with a pseudonymous identifier derived from the connection IP, queued in memory until exit. No document content, metadata or filenames are sent, and it is opt-out rather than opt-in. This is the first record in the index where a locally installed library is network-active by default.
- Redaction
- Not checked
Visit borb Read the full record
Why this matches
Camelot camelot-py.readthedocs.io
Python library dedicated to pulling tables out of PDFs, with a parser chosen per document and pandas DataFrames as the output.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A Python library that reads a file from disk and returns tables. No hosted service exists to send anything to.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Camelot Read the full record
Why this matches
Mobile document scanner with OCR, PDF conversion and cloud sync.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · macOS · iOS · Android · API
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit CamScanner Read the full record
Why this matches
Document parsing and extraction service, run from their cloud or self-hosted from the open-source release.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- API · Self-hosted
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: The AGPL release. On their servers: The managed API. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Chunkr Read the full record
Why this matches
Windows add-in that generates accessible PDFs from Word and PowerPoint and walks the author through the checkpoints.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Windows
- Your files
- Windows add-in for Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. The document is authored and tagged on the workstation through Office's own interface, so there is no service for the file to be sent to. Installation activates a product key over the internet, but that is licensing rather than document processing.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit CommonLook Office Read the full record
Why this matches
AI-assisted PDF accessibility remediation in the browser or on the desktop, with PDF/UA, WCAG and HHS validation.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · macOS
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: The Acrobat plug-in, Windows, The Acrobat plug-in, macOS. On their servers: The web edition. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit CommonLook PDF Read the full record
Why this matches
Browser PDF editor and e-signature tool wired into Google Drive and Gmail.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · iOS · Android
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- Covers, not removes
Visit DocHub Read the full record
Why this matches
Docling docling-project.github.io
IBM-started open-source library that turns PDFs and office documents into structured Markdown, HTML or JSON with layout, table and reading-order models.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · API · Self-hosted
- Your files
- An in-process Python library and CLI with no hosted component and no account. One exception, recorded in the note: the optional VLM picture-description path and the convert-remote command can be pointed at a server, so page images leave only if the operator configures it that way.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Docling Read the full record
Why this matches
Hosted HTML-to-PDF API built on the Prince engine, with CSS Paged Media and tagged accessible output.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- API
- Your files
- We observed a file upload to api.docraptor.com.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit DocRaptor Read the full record
Why this matches
Open-source e-signature platform you can self-host or use as a hosted cloud.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Web · API · Self-hosted
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Documenso Read the full record
Why this matches
Open-source document signing and fillable PDF forms, self-hosted or cloud.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Web · API · Self-hosted
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit DocuSeal Read the full record
Why this matches
Cloud e-signature and agreement management, with audit trails.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · API
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit DocuSign Read the full record
Why this matches
dompdf dompdf.github.io
PHP HTML-to-PDF renderer with its own CSS 2.1 layout engine and no browser to install.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Self-hosted
- Your files
- A PHP library running in your own process. No service and no account; it will fetch external stylesheets and images over http or ftp when a template asks, which is the application's own configuration rather than a vendor service.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit dompdf Read the full record
Why this matches
Hosted e-signature for sending, signing and tracking agreements.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · API
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Dropbox Sign Read the full record
Why this matches
Cloud PDF remediation service: upload a document, tag it in a browser with automated detectors, export accessible PDF, HTML or ePub.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- We observed a file upload to app.equidox.co.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Equidox Read the full record
Why this matches
Commercial PDF editor with OCR, genuine redaction and eSign.
- Cost
- From £8.15 a month
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Web · iOS · Android · API
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: Foxit PDF Editor installed on Windows and macOS. On their servers: Local AI on the user’s hardware, Smart Redact in the vendor cloud and other AI services. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit Foxit PDF Editor Read the full record
Why this matches
Commercial PDF library for embedding rendering, editing, signing and redaction in your own application.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · iOS · Android · Web · Self-hosted
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: Foxit PDF SDK linked into an application on a device or customer server. On their servers: Licence validation where enabled, plus web and mobile editions. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit Foxit PDF SDK Read the full record
Why this matches
fpdf2 github.com
Pure-Python PDF creation library with Unicode font embedding, successor to PyFPDF.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Self-hosted
- Your files
- A Python package running in your own interpreter. No service, no account, and no network calls of its own.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit fpdf2 Read the full record
Why this matches
FPDI setasign.com
PHP library that imports pages from existing PDFs into FPDF, mPDF, TCPDF and tFPDF templates.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Self-hosted
- Your files
- A pure-PHP component you require inside your own application. No service and no account; the source PDF and the generated one never leave your infrastructure.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit FPDI Read the full record
Why this matches
On-device mobile scanner with OCR, PDF creation and optional cloud sync.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · iOS · Android · API
- Your files
- Claimed by the vendor. Not yet independently verified.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Genius Scan Read the full record
Why this matches
PostScript and PDF interpreter and SDK for converting, rasterising and compressing.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · API · Self-hosted
- Your files
- Installed interpreter and embeddable SDK. It runs wherever you put it, including your own servers, but Artifex never sees the documents.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Ghostscript Read the full record
Why this matches
Desktop GUI that runs the Tesseract OCR engine over images and PDFs.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · Linux
- Your files
- Installed desktop application linking against a locally installed Tesseract. No service, no upload, no account.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit gImageReader Read the full record
Why this matches
Tablet-first note-taking and PDF annotation with sync, collaboration and AI.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- iOS · Android · Windows · macOS · Web
- Your files
- Claimed by the vendor. Not yet independently verified.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Goodnotes Read the full record
Why this matches
Chrome's PDF viewer, which OCRs scanned PDFs automatically on your device.
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · macOS · Linux · Android
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: Chrome on Windows, macOS and Linux, Chrome on Android. On their servers: Saving to Drive, and the Android edit action. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Google Chrome built-in PDF viewer Read the full record
Why this matches
Google's cloud OCR: Vision for text in images, Document AI for structured extraction.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · API
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Google Cloud Vision API and Document AI Read the full record
Why this matches
Self-hosted Docker API for document-to-PDF conversion and PDF manipulation.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Linux · API · Self-hosted
- Your files
- This runs on a server you operate rather than on your own device: The container, on Linux, A self-hosted instance, The HTTP API it exposes. Documents do not reach a server the vendor runs, and they do not stay in your browser either.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Gotenberg Read the full record
Why this matches
Machine-learning extraction of scholarly PDFs into structured XML/TEI for citation and metadata mining.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Self-hosted · Linux · Windows · macOS
- Your files
- Claimed by the vendor. Not yet independently verified.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit GROBID Read the full record
Why this matches
Document SDK family for .NET, Java, Node.js and Python, from the company behind Aspose.
- Cost
- From £897.24 one-off
- Platforms
- Self-hosted
- Your files
- Libraries that run inside your own application on .NET, Java, Node.js or Python. GroupDocs operates no document processing service, so documents are opened and written on your own infrastructure.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit GroupDocs Read the full record
Why this matches
Open-source Java PDF engine for rendering, converting and extracting, maintained as a community project on GitHub.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Self-hosted
- Your files
- A Java library and viewer running in your own JVM or servlet container. ICEsoft operates no document processing service in that path.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit ICEpdf Read the full record
Why this matches
Broad web PDF toolkit with desktop, mobile and API companions.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · macOS · iOS · Android · API
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- Covers, not removes
Visit iLovePDF Read the full record
Why this matches
Commercial in-process PDF library for .NET, Java, Python and Node.js, priced in perpetual per-developer tiers.
- Cost
- From £740.96 one-off
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- An in-process .NET library. The vendor states documents are not sent to Iron Software and everything runs locally; the only network calls described are licence validation and the optional URL-to-PDF render.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit IronPDF Read the full record
Why this matches
iText itextpdf.com
Java and .NET PDF library with an AGPL-3.0 core and component-specific licensing.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- An in-process Java and .NET library. There is no hosted component and no vendor service in the path, so documents are parsed and written inside the calling application.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit iText Read the full record
Why this matches
JPedal idrsolutions.com
Pure Java PDF library for rendering, extraction, viewing and manipulation, with published prices.
- Cost
- From £710.90 one-off
- Platforms
- Self-hosted
- Your files
- A Java library that runs in your own JVM, on-premise or in your own cloud. IDRsolutions operates no document processing service; the vendor's own framing is that it runs in the same JVM with no native process bridge.
- Redaction
- Not checked
Visit JPedal Read the full record
Why this matches
jpgtopdf jpgtopdfmobile.com
A JPG to PDF converter that builds the PDF in your browser and never uploads your images.
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · macOS · Linux · iOS · Android
- Your files
- We supplied a marked PNG on 16 October 2026 and no file left the device. Our check confirmed the tool actually ran: The page reported the PDF ready, so the conversion ran.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit jpgtopdf Read the full record
Why this matches
jsPDF github.com
Client-side JavaScript library that generates PDFs in the browser or in Node.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Web · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A JavaScript library that runs in the browser or in your own Node process and writes bytes to a download or a file, so generating a PDF needs no vendor-hosted rendering service. That is not the same as an empty network, and the difference is worth stating: its browser file-loading module performs XMLHttpRequest GET requests for resources the caller names, such as an image or a font it has been asked to embed. Loading a resource is not uploading a document, and neither proves the other. What holds is that nothing about the document leaves the device unless the application using the library sends it somewhere.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit jsPDF Read the full record
Why this matches
Commercial PDF SDK for .NET, C++ and mobile targets, with OCR, forms, conversion and automatic redaction alongside the PDF API.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Windows · Linux · macOS · Android · iOS · Web · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A commercial SDK compiled into the application you build. The PDF library and the Document Analyzer component that drives automatic redaction both run in your own process on your own infrastructure; LEADTOOLS operates no processing service in that path and there is no account.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit LEADTOOLS PDF SDK Read the full record
Why this matches
Digital accessibility platform covering documents as well as web, mobile and software.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Web
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Level Access Read the full record
Why this matches
Free office drawing app that opens PDFs for light editing and re-export.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- Your files
- Installed desktop application. It opens and saves files on local storage with no vendor service involved.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit LibreOffice Draw Read the full record
Why this matches
Hosted parsing API that turns complex documents into Markdown for AI pipelines.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- API
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit LlamaParse Read the full record
Why this matches
PDF-to-Markdown converter built around a vision-language model, sold by Datalab as an open-source tool and a paid hosted API.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · API · Self-hosted
- Your files
- Two products share the name, and four distinct paths sit inside the first. The open-source package runs on your own machine, but it is not offline out of the box: model weights download on first use, and the GPU path spawns a vLLM inference server inside Docker with the CPU and Apple Silicon path needing the llama.cpp server binary. The optional --use_llm workflow is the one whose destination varies, and it depends on the service chosen: Gemini is the documented default, and the README also lists a local Ollama and configurable OpenAI-compatible endpoints, so it does not follow that every invocation uploads to somebody else's model. The Datalab hosted API is the second product and is a service in the ordinary sense.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Marker Read the full record
Why this matches
Desktop PDF editor for editing, converting and signing, with vendor-documented redaction and a demo watermark.
- Cost
- From £59.30 one-off
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: Master PDF Editor on the desktop. On their servers: Activation and update checks. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Not checked
Visit Master PDF Editor Read the full record
Why this matches
PDF reader built into Edge, with inking, highlighting, text notes and read aloud.
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · macOS
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: Edge on Windows, Edge on macOS. On their servers: Viewing Purview-protected files. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Microsoft Edge PDF reader and editor Read the full record
Why this matches
Retired Microsoft mobile scanner, replaced by the scanner in OneDrive.
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- iOS · Android
- Your files
- We have not yet tested this tool.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Microsoft Lens Read the full record
Why this matches
Phone scanner built into OneDrive, and Microsoft's official Lens replacement.
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- iOS · Android
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Microsoft OneDrive document scanning Read the full record
Why this matches
Cloud document AI API that turns invoices, receipts, passports and IDs into JSON.
- Cost
- From £44.00 a month
- Platforms
- API
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Mindee Read the full record
Why this matches
mPDF mpdf.github.io
PHP library that generates PDFs from UTF-8 HTML, and whose manual calls it dated.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Self-hosted
- Your files
- A PHP library running in your own web server's process. No service, no account, no network call — the HTML and the data behind it stay on your infrastructure.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit mPDF Read the full record
Why this matches
Fast C PDF library plus the mutool command-line suite.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · API · Self-hosted
- Your files
- Installed command-line binary and embeddable C library. Documents are read and written on the machine running it.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit MuPDF (mutool) Read the full record
Why this matches
MuPDF.js mupdfjs.readthedocs.io
Artifex's WebAssembly build of the MuPDF engine for JavaScript and browsers.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Web · Self-hosted
- Your files
- The MuPDF C engine compiled to WebAssembly and shipped inside the package, so parsing, rendering and editing happen in your own browser or Node process.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit MuPDF.js Read the full record
Why this matches
Commercial PDF editor and eSign suite for Windows, Mac and iOS.
- Cost
- From £138.00 a year
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · iOS
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: Nitro PDF Pro installed on Windows and macOS. On their servers: Smart Tools online services. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit Nitro PDF Pro Read the full record
Why this matches
Fill, sign, merge and convert PDFs without the file leaving your device.
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- Web
- Your files
- We supplied a test PDF on 16 October 2026 and no file left the device. Our check confirmed the tool actually ran: The tool produced a file for download (probe-filled.pdf), so it demonstrably ran.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit No Fuss PDF Read the full record
Why this matches
Handwriting-first note app with PDF annotation, linked audio and AI study tools.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- iOS · Android · macOS · Windows · Web
- Your files
- Claimed by the vendor. Not yet independently verified.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Notability Read the full record
Why this matches
Meta's academic PDF parser that reads LaTeX maths and tables into Markdown.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Self-hosted
- Your files
- A Python package and a model that run on your own hardware. The optional API mode is a local server on 127.0.0.1, so even that path keeps documents on the machine; the only fetch is the model weights.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Nougat Read the full record
Why this matches
Commercial PDF SDK with a client-side web SDK and self-hosted document engine.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Web · macOS · iOS · Android · API · Self-hosted
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: Nutrient Web SDK running client side. On their servers: Document Engine, hosted APIs and online licence validation. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit Nutrient Read the full record
Why this matches
OCRmyPDF ocrmypdf.readthedocs.io
Command-line tool that adds a searchable OCR text layer to scanned PDFs.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- Command-line tool and Python library, usually run on your own machine or in your own container. No vendor service in the path.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit OCRmyPDF Read the full record
Why this matches
Okular okular.kde.org
KDE's free multi-format document viewer for PDF, EPub, comics and images.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Linux · Windows · macOS
- Your files
- An installed desktop application with no service component. Documents are opened, rendered, annotated and saved on the local machine.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Okular Read the full record
Why this matches
A document scanner in the browser: photograph a page, straighten it, read the text and build a searchable PDF.
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- Web
- Your files
- We supplied a marked PNG on 16 October 2026 and no file left the device. Our check confirmed the tool actually ran: The page counted the imported image as a page, so the scanner took the file in.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit OpenDocScan Read the full record
Why this matches
OpenSign opensignlabs.com
Open-source e-signature you can self-host, or use free in their cloud.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · API · Self-hosted
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: The Docker deployment. On their servers: The free hosted version, The hosted API. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit OpenSign Read the full record
Why this matches
PAC pac.pdf-accessibility.org
Free Windows accessibility checker for PDF/UA and WCAG, with local AI-assisted semantic checks.
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- Windows
- Your files
- An installed Windows application that the vendor states operates completely offline, sends nothing to the internet or to axes4 servers, and has no licensing system to check in with. Its 2026 AI checks run on a model shipped inside the application, and the vendor explicitly declined to offer alt-text checking because that would have required a server-side model. Strongest documentary locality claim in the accessibility group.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit PAC Read the full record
Why this matches
Hosted platform for building, sending and e-signing proposals and contracts.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · API
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit PandaDoc Read the full record
Why this matches
Modular Windows PDF editor from the PDFCreator team, with real redaction.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Windows
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: PDF Architect on the desktop. On their servers: Account activation and e-signature workflows. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit PDF Architect Read the full record
Why this matches
Desktop app for merging, splitting and rearranging PDF pages visually.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- Your files
- Desktop application. It reads and writes local files through a graphical window; no server is involved.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit PDF Arranger Read the full record
Why this matches
Browser PDF toolkit with 90+ tools, plus an offline Windows desktop app.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · Windows
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- Covers, not removes
Visit PDF Candy Read the full record
Why this matches
Compare the text of two PDFs in the browser and see exactly what changed.
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- Web
- Your files
- We supplied a test PDF on 16 October 2026 and no file left the device. Our check confirmed the tool actually ran: A comparison result was reported, so the tool processed both documents.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit PDF Compare Read the full record
Why this matches
Readdle's PDF editor and reader for Mac, iPad and iPhone.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- macOS · iOS
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: PDF Expert on Mac and iOS. On their servers: Conversion, AI and cloud sync features. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit PDF Expert Read the full record
Why this matches
Perpetual-licence PDF editor for Windows, Mac and Linux, now sold as Xodo PDF Studio.
- Cost
- From £14.83 a month
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- Your files
- Installed desktop application for Windows, macOS and Linux. The vendor also sells adjacent server and online products, but the editor itself runs locally.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit PDF Studio Read the full record
Why this matches
pdf-lib pdf-lib.js.org
JavaScript library for creating PDFs and filling forms, pages and metadata.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Web · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A pure JavaScript library operating on in-memory byte arrays in your own runtime. No vendor service and no runtime downloads, so it can be fully air-gapped.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit pdf-lib Read the full record
Why this matches
Python library that scrubs a PDF's text layer, links and metadata by regex.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- Your files
- Python module and script that must be installed and run on your own machine. The project publishes no hosted service, so there is no server in the path.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit pdf-redactor Read the full record
Why this matches
Windows SDK for creating and manipulating PDFs, now sold only to approved developers on application.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Windows
- Your files
- A compiled library embedded in the application you build, licensed by licence strings compiled in at release time. There is no vendor service in the path and no account: Tracker Software operates no processing endpoint in that path.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit PDF-XChange Core API SDK Read the full record
Why this matches
Windows-only PDF editor with a large free tier and perpetual licences.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Windows
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: PDF-XChange Editor on Windows. On their servers: Optional AI providers. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Not checked
Visit PDF-XChange Editor Read the full record
Why this matches
PDF.js mozilla.github.io
Mozilla's JavaScript library for parsing and rendering PDFs in the browser.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Web · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A JavaScript library that parses and renders from bytes you supply, in the page or in Node. No Mozilla service is involved.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit PDF.js Read the full record
Why this matches
Free ad-funded PDF toolkit online, plus a free offline Windows Creator app.
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- Web · Windows
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: PDF24 Creator for Windows. On their servers: The online tools. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit PDF24 Read the full record
Why this matches
German browser PDF toolkit for converting, compressing, OCR and redaction.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · macOS · Linux · Android · iOS
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit PDF2Go Read the full record
Why this matches
pdfaPilot callassoftware.com
PDF/A and PDF/UA conversion, validation and correction for archiving and accessibility.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Self-hosted
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: pdfaPilot Desktop on Windows and macOS. On their servers: Server and CLI deployments run by the customer. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit pdfaPilot Read the full record
Why this matches
Go PDF library and CLI for validation, assembly and encryption.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A compiled Go library and CLI that runs in-process on the caller's machine, with no service component.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit pdfcpu Read the full record
Why this matches
Long-running free browser PDF editor and form filler, with paid desktop tiers.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · Windows
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- Not checked
Visit PDFescape Read the full record
Why this matches
Free cross-platform PDF editor, converter and signer with an AI copilot.
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · iOS · Android · Web
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: Windows, macOS, iOS, Android. On their servers: Browser tools. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Not checked
Visit PDFgear Read the full record
Why this matches
pdfGoHTML callassoftware.com
Free Acrobat plug-in that renders a tagged PDF as structured HTML, so a person can judge its accessibility and tagging.
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS
- Your files
- An Acrobat plug-in: the PDF is opened and converted to HTML inside your own copy of Acrobat, on your own machine. The account the vendor requires gates the download, not the processing.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit pdfGoHTML Read the full record
Why this matches
PDFium pdfium.googlesource.com
Google's BSD-licensed C++ PDF rendering engine, embedded in Chrome.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Android
- Your files
- An in-process C++ rendering engine with no service component, so documents are parsed and rendered inside the host process.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit PDFium Read the full record
Why this matches
On-premises PDF accessibility desktop app and SDK: PDF/UA and WCAG validation, auto-tagging and batch remediation.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · API
- Your files
- A desktop application and an embeddable SDK, documented as fully on-premises with no document data sent to PDFix servers or any cloud service. One caveat that belongs with the verdict: two optional AI actions in the vendor's own marketplace do send page images to Amazon Textract and content to OpenAI, so the no-upload position is true of the core product and false for those specific actions.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit PDFix Read the full record
Why this matches
Long-standing commercial library for generating PDFs, with page-import and personalisation tiers.
- Cost
- From £740.00 one-off
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A commercial library for generating PDFs, linked into your own application. It runs in your process and writes to your own storage; PDFlib operates no processing service to upload to.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit PDFlib Read the full record
Why this matches
pdfminer.six pdfminersix.readthedocs.io
Pure-Python library for pulling text, images and structure out of a PDF, with a command-line tool.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Linux · Windows · macOS · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A pure-Python library and its pdf2txt.py command line. It runs in your own interpreter with no service, no account and no network call in the package.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit pdfminer.six Read the full record
Why this matches
Python library that exposes every character, line and rectangle in a PDF, with text and table extraction built on top of that.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A pure-Python library that parses bytes already in memory. There is no vendor service and no network component at all.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit pdfplumber Read the full record
Why this matches
REST API for PDF processing built on Adobe PDF Library, with a self-hosted option.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- API · Self-hosted
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit pdfRest Read the full record
Why this matches
Desktop PDF split and merge apps — Basic is free and open source, others paid.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- Your files
- Desktop applications for Windows, macOS and Linux. There is no web service to upload to.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit PDFsam Read the full record
Why this matches
PDFsharp docs.pdfsharp.net
MIT-licensed .NET library for creating PDFs with GDI+-style drawing and for modifying, merging and splitting existing ones.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A .NET library compiled into the calling application. It has no server component and no vendor endpoint.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit PDFsharp Read the full record
Why this matches
French HTML-to-PDF API running headless Chromium behind a single REST endpoint.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- API
- Your files
- We observed a file upload to api.pdfshift.io.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit PDFShift Read the full record
Why this matches
Java port of pdftk for scripted merging, splitting, form filling and encryption.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- Local command-line program that reads and writes files on the invoking machine. No account and no service.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit pdftk-java Read the full record
Why this matches
Preflight, correction and PDF standards validation, including PDF/UA accessibility checks.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Self-hosted
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: pdfToolbox Desktop on Windows, macOS and Linux server packages. On their servers: Server and CLI workflows, activation and update checks. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit pdfToolbox Read the full record
Why this matches
Client-side PDF viewer SDK for web and mobile, with true redaction built in.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Web · iOS · Android · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A client-side SDK: it renders, annotates and redacts inside the browser or the mobile app, which is the vendor's whole pitch — "directly on the client without a server-side PDF library". No Pdftools service is in the path.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit Pdftools PDF Viewer SDK Read the full record
Why this matches
Commercial SDK for PDF/A conversion, validation, compression and signing at volume.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Windows · Linux · macOS · Self-hosted
- Your files
- An SDK that runs inside your own application. The vendor's own wording is "deploy on-premise, in the cloud, or hybrid", where cloud means the customer's cloud rather than theirs. The same company also sells a separate Conversion Service, and the documentation offers that for self-hosted, on-premises and cloud deployment on Windows, Linux and Docker, so it is not a vendor-hosted-only product: a REST API is an interface rather than evidence that the vendor processes the files.
- Redaction
- Not checked
Visit Pdftools SDK Read the full record
Why this matches
pikepdf pikepdf.readthedocs.io
Python wrapper around qpdf for reading, repairing and structurally editing PDFs.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- An in-process Python extension that compiles qpdf into the wheel. There is no hosted component at all.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit pikepdf Read the full record
Why this matches
Poppler poppler.freedesktop.org
GPL PDF rendering library and command-line toolset used across Linux desktops.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Linux · Windows · macOS · Android
- Your files
- A library plus command-line binaries that run in your own process or shell, with no service component of any kind.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Poppler Read the full record
Why this matches
Power PDF tungstenautomation.com
Office-style PDF editor where genuine redaction needs the Advanced tier.
- Cost
- From £95.00 one-off
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · macOS · iOS · Android
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: Power PDF Standard, Advanced and Mac editions. On their servers: Business cloud editor, Teams and configured AI services. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Not checked
Visit Power PDF Read the full record
Why this matches
PREP continualengine.com
Continual Engine's cloud platform for PDF and document accessibility remediation, with AI auto-tagging and OCR built in.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Web
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit PREP Read the full record
Why this matches
Prince princexml.com
HTML and CSS typesetting engine that produces print-quality PDF, books included.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Self-hosted
- Your files
- A program you install and run yourself. It reads HTML and CSS from local storage or a URL you choose and writes the PDF locally; YesLogic operates no processing service in the path.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Prince Read the full record
Why this matches
Accusoft's document viewing and processing APIs, with permanent redaction and AI-assisted PII detection, self-hosted or hosted.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- API · Self-hosted · Web
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: PrizmDoc Server deployed by the customer. On their servers: PrizmDoc Cloud hosted by the vendor. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit PrizmDoc Read the full record
Why this matches
PyMuPDF pymupdf.readthedocs.io
Fast Python document library built on MuPDF, with genuine destructive redaction.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A native Python extension linking the MuPDF C engine, so parsing, rendering and redaction all run in the calling process. Its README states there are no telemetry calls and no cloud dependencies.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit PyMuPDF Read the full record
Why this matches
pypdf github.com
Pure-Python library for splitting, merging, transforming and reading PDF documents.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Self-hosted · Linux · Windows · macOS
- Your files
- A pure-Python library with no service component. It reads and writes files in the caller's own process, so there is no server in the path and nothing for a probe to observe.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit pypdf Read the full record
Why this matches
Java PDF library suite that is no longer sold: its functionality moved to Apryse Java PDF.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Self-hosted
- Your files
- Java libraries embedded in your own application and running on your own JVM. Qoppa operates no processing service. The suite is unsold rather than switched off, so an existing deployment is unaffected.
- Redaction
- Not checked
Visit Qoppa Java PDF SDK Read the full record
Why this matches
qpdf qpdf.readthedocs.io
Command-line tool and C++ library for structural PDF transformations.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- Your files
- Command-line tool and library. It reads and writes local files; there is no service involved.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit qpdf Read the full record
Why this matches
Hosted document parsing and extraction API, priced per page, for AI pipelines.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- API · Self-hosted
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Reducto Read the full record
Why this matches
Python library for generating PDFs from code, from a low-level drawing canvas up to a page-layout engine, under a BSD licence.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A Python library that writes PDFs inside the calling process. The open-source toolkit makes no network calls at all; the separate proprietary PLUS product is a different thing and is not what this record describes.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit ReportLab Read the full record
Why this matches
Free email and web service that converts documents into accessible formats: Braille, audio, e-books and tagged PDF.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web
- Your files
- We observed a file upload to robobraille.org.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit RoboBraille Read the full record
Why this matches
Commercial on-device SDK for mobile scanning, barcodes and data capture.
- Cost
- From £1,854.25 a year
- Platforms
- Android · iOS · Web
- Your files
- Claimed by the vendor. Not yet independently verified.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Scanbot SDK Read the full record
Why this matches
iPhone and iPad scanner with on-device OCR, PDF merging, signing and faxing.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- iOS
- Your files
- Claimed by the vendor. Not yet independently verified.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Scanner Pro Read the full record
Why this matches
Browser and desktop PDF editor with 30+ tools and a limited free tier.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · macOS · Linux
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: Sejda Desktop for Windows, Sejda Desktop for macOS, Sejda Desktop for Linux. On their servers: The web service. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Covers, not removes
Visit Sejda Read the full record
Why this matches
Self-service conversion of documents into accessible formats, and remediation of inaccessible PDFs.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Web
- Your files
- We observed a file upload to sensusaccess.com.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit SensusAccess Read the full record
Why this matches
Commercial PHP library giving low-level access to PDF objects, metadata and encryption.
- Cost
- From £154.40 one-off
- Platforms
- Self-hosted
- Your files
- A pure-PHP library running in your own process. No service and no account; documents are read and written on your own infrastructure.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit SetaPDF-Core Read the full record
Why this matches
Cloud e-signature platform for sending, signing and tracking documents.
- Cost
- From £14.83 a month
- Platforms
- Web · iOS · Android · API
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit SignNow Read the full record
Why this matches
Straightforward e-signature service with a free tier, REST API and CLI.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · API
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit SignWell Read the full record
Why this matches
Browser PDF editor and form filler that processes files in your browser.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · API
- Your files
- Claimed by the vendor. Not yet independently verified.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit SimplePDF Read the full record
Why this matches
Browser PDF toolkit with 30+ tools and a Pro subscription, built in Switzerland.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · iOS · Android
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit Smallpdf Read the full record
Why this matches
Your PDFs stay on your device.
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- Web
- Your files
- We supplied a test PDF on 16 October 2026 and no file left the device. Our check confirmed the tool actually ran: A download control appeared after processing, so the tool did run.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit SnackPDF Read the full record
Why this matches
Subscription PDF suite with a Windows app, a browser edition and online AI tools.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · macOS · Linux · iOS · Android
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit Soda PDF Read the full record
Why this matches
PDF-to-Office conversion SDK that is no longer sold separately: its technology moved into the Apryse SDK.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Self-hosted
- Your files
- A discontinued embedded SDK and a set of installed desktop applications. The conversion ran in the customer's own environment, and the page that remains describes a legacy download portal rather than a hosted service. Where the successor capability inside the Apryse SDK processes documents is a question for that record, not this one.
- Redaction
- Not checked
Visit Solid Framework Read the full record
Why this matches
Commercial .NET and Java PDF library whose free edition stops at ten pages.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Windows · Linux · macOS · Self-hosted
- Your files
- Libraries that run inside your own .NET or Java application. E-iceblue operates no processing service in that path, though the same brand sells Spire.Cloud, which is a separate product.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Spire.PDF Read the full record
Why this matches
Open-source PDF suite you can self-host, run as a desktop app, or use via API.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · macOS · Linux · API · Self-hosted
- Your files
- We ran the self-hosted edition ourselves and supplied a test PDF on 22 September 2026. A file was sent to localhost:8080 — a server on our own machine, not the vendor's — and to no other host. That is a statement about the self-hosted edition we tested. It is not a statement about the vendor's hosted service, which is a different product on different infrastructure.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit Stirling PDF Read the full record
Why this matches
SumatraPDF sumatrapdfreader.org
Free, open-source, lightweight PDF and ebook reader for Windows.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows
- Your files
- A local Windows application with no cloud service. One caveat worth keeping: the pre-release AI chat sidebar hands document context to a third-party agent tool, though not to SumatraPDF servers.
- Redaction
- Not checked
Visit SumatraPDF Read the full record
Why this matches
Surya github.com
Open document OCR and layout model that returns text, reading order and tables as structured output.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Linux · Windows · macOS · Self-hosted
- Your files
- An OCR and layout model that runs on your own hardware. It does need an inference backend — vLLM or llama.cpp — which it starts as a local process, and the documentation allows pointing it at a server elsewhere through an environment variable, but no vendor service receives the document by default.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Surya Read the full record
Why this matches
Phone scanner for documents and QR codes, with OCR, signing and fax.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- iOS · Android
- Your files
- Claimed by the vendor. Not yet independently verified.
- Redaction
- Not checked
Visit SwiftScan Read the full record
Why this matches
The PDF library inside Essential Studio, sold as part of the Document SDK rather than on its own.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- An in-process .NET library running on the customer's own servers, with no server deployment fee. Worth keeping in the note: the vendor also publishes free browser PDF tools that do upload, and they are a separate product from this library.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit Syncfusion PDF Read the full record
Why this matches
Tabula tabula.technology
Desktop and command-line table extraction from text-based PDFs, output to CSV, TSV or JSON.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- The desktop application is a local service that reads and writes files on the machine. Two outbound calls exist and neither carries a document — a GitHub version check and a statistics ping, both disableable by flag.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Tabula Read the full record
Why this matches
PHP PDF library built from focused packages, the successor to the deprecated TCPDF.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Self-hosted
- Your files
- PHP packages running in your own process. The project's own framing is that everything runs in PHP with nothing to keep alive next to your application.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit tc-lib-pdf Read the full record
Why this matches
Progress's .NET libraries for creating, editing and converting PDF, Word and Excel files with no Office, Acrobat or UI dependency.
- Cost
- Paid
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A set of .NET libraries compiled into the application you build. The vendor makes the point explicitly — no Microsoft Office or Adobe Acrobat installation is required and the libraries are UI-independent — so there is no vendor service and no document ever leaves the process it runs in.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Telerik Document Processing Libraries Read the full record
Why this matches
Open-source OCR engine and command-line tool, with no graphical interface.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: The Tesseract engine installed locally. On their servers: A hosted integration a developer builds around it. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Tesseract OCR Read the full record
Why this matches
Tesseract.js tesseract.projectnaptha.com
WebAssembly port of the Tesseract OCR engine for browsers and Node.js.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Web · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A JavaScript library that runs the OCR engine as a WebAssembly module inside your own browser or Node process. No vendor service receives the image. Note it fetches language data from a CDN by default, so not every byte is local.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Tesseract.js Read the full record
Why this matches
Open-source partitioning of PDFs and other documents into structured elements for LLM pipelines.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Self-hosted · Linux · Windows · macOS
- Your files
- Claimed by the vendor. Not yet independently verified.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Unstructured Read the full record
Why this matches
Industry-backed open source accessibility validator for PDF/A and PDF/UA conformance.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux · Self-hosted
- Your files
- A Java application installed locally, also available as a container image. No hosted validation service is involved, which is what makes it usable on restricted preservation networks.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit veraPDF Read the full record
Why this matches
Open-source CSS typesetting project that turns HTML into print-quality PDF, in a browser or a CLI.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Web · Self-hosted
- Your files
- The viewer runs in the browser and the CLI and core engine run on your own machine or inside your own application. No Vivliostyle service is in the path for either, though the alpha hosted editor is a separate product.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Vivliostyle Read the full record
Why this matches
Open-source Python library that turns HTML and CSS into PDF documents.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Self-hosted
- Your files
- A Python package and its command line, running in your own process. There is no service and no account, so templates and data never leave the machine generating the document.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit WeasyPrint Read the full record
Why this matches
Cross-platform PDF editor with OCR, Smart Redact and AI tools.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · macOS · iOS · Android
- Your files
- The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit Wondershare PDFelement Read the full record
Why this matches
Xodo xodo.com
Apryse's cross-platform PDF suite: browser tools, a desktop editor and mobile apps.
- Cost
- Free + paid
- Platforms
- Web · Windows · macOS · Linux · iOS · Android
- Your files
- The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: Xodo PDF Studio on Windows, macOS and Linux. On their servers: Xodo Web tools that require an upload. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.
- Redaction
- Removes content
Visit Xodo Read the full record
Why this matches
Xournal++ xournalpp.github.io
Open-source handwriting app for annotating PDFs with a stylus on desktop.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Windows · macOS · Linux
- Your files
- A local desktop application with no server or account. PDFs are used as a journal background and the result is exported locally.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit Xournal++ Read the full record
Why this matches
Keyboard-driven, plugin-based document viewer for Linux and BSD, with PDF handled by poppler or MuPDF.
- Cost
- Open source
- Platforms
- Linux
- Your files
- An installed local viewer. Documents are opened from the filesystem and rendered on the machine by whichever format plugin is installed, with no vendor service and no account, and no document upload or telemetry described in the project material. One outbound action is documented: links in a document open in an external browser, which sends nothing about the document but is outbound all the same, so this describes local document viewing rather than guaranteeing no outbound interaction.
- Redaction
- No feature
Visit zathura Read the full record
Why this matches