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AvePDF

Free browser PDF toolkit, operated by the company behind the Nutrient SDK.

Jobs Compress Convert Merge Protect OCR Sign Edit

Since 2019

Operated by Orpalis Imaging SAS

Visit AvePDF

Opens the vendor's own site.

Jobs covered

Open a task to see exactly what the vendor documentation supports.

Compress Browse all compress tools

compressing a PDF in the browser on AvePDF by uploading a file of up to 128 MB and choosing a low, medium, high or very high compression level before downloading or saving the compressed PDF, powered by Nutrient PDF Optimization and the GdPicture MRC compression SDK, with free use limited to a small number of actions before Premium is required

Convert Browse all convert tools

browser-based conversion of more than 100 file types to PDF, plus documented PDF-to-image conversion tools; limits and supported formats vary by tool

Merge Browse all merge tools

merging multiple PDFs into one file in the browser on AvePDF by uploading a first PDF and then more files, each up to 128 MB, checking the file order and reorganising it before clicking Merge and downloading or saving the merged PDF, powered by the Nutrient PDF Editor and GdPicture.NET SDK, with free use limited to a small number of actions before Premium is required

Protect Browse all protect tools

browser-based password protection for uploaded PDFs through the lock tool; the documented tool limit is 128 MB and files are processed by the service

OCR Browse all ocr tools

running OCR in the browser on AvePDF on files in more than 100 formats up to 128 MB to generate a searchable PDF, choosing OCR languages from English, French, German, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese, powered by Nutrient OCR and the GdPicture.NET SDK, with free use limited to a small number of actions before Premium is required

Sign Browse all sign tools

signing a PDF in the browser on AvePDF by drawing a signature with the cursor or importing one from the device, placing it by drawing a box on the document, optionally importing a certificate with its password for an additional level of security, and downloading or saving the signed PDF, powered by Nutrient PDF Signature and the GdPicture.NET SDK, with free use limited to a small number of actions before Premium is required

Edit Browse all edit tools

editing a PDF in the browser on AvePDF with the Online PDF Editor by adding text, images and other items drawn directly on the page and then selecting and moving or recolouring them, and rotating pages, on files up to 128 MB, powered by Nutrient PDF Editor and the GdPicture.NET SDK, with free use limited to a small number of actions before Premium is required

Where your files are processed

Reported to upload your files

The vendor states that files are uploaded to their servers. We have not independently tested this.

It is a hosted service, and the documented server upload and processing is what the record can evidence; EU residency would still need a direct regional source. Files are accessible for up to 30 minutes rather than deleted about thirty minutes later, and the free-service notice separately permits retention of free uploads for service improvement and model training while directing deletion requests to its privacy policy.

That distinction belongs before an outbound action rather than after it.

What it does

AvePDF is a free browser document toolkit from Orpalis Imaging SAS, which now trades as Nutrient, offering more than fifty tools for conversion, compression and hyper-compression, OCR, e-signing, forms, locking and unlocking, watermarks, annotation and permanent redaction. Free use needs no account, but each free user gets a limited number of actions before being prompted to upgrade.

Files are uploaded and processed on AvePDF's servers rather than on the device.

Best for

One-off, non-confidential document jobs where you want a broad tool set in a browser with no install and no signup.

Worth knowing

Confidentiality: the free service's own privacy notice says uploaded files may be retained and used to develop the vendor's services and train its models. Sensitive documents should not go through the free tier.

The annotation, conversion and merge pages document a 128 MB maximum, which is scoped to the tools that document it rather than applied to every operation. A multi-file merge is not evidence of general batch processing.

The homepage links separate enterprise SDK and REST offerings, which are products with their own terms rather than a public AvePDF API included in free web use. The free-service retention notice permits retention of free uploads for service improvement and model training, while Premium handling is documented separately, and the two should not be run together.

Details, and where each comes from

Vendor statements, our own reading of their pages, and the things nobody has established yet, each answered separately. Where we have not confirmed something it says so rather than guessing, and a row nobody has established is greyed out.

Versions covered
Web
Website
avepdf.com
Requires an account
No
Free tier
Yes
Watermark on the free tier
No
Maximum file size
Not verified
Batch processing
Yes
Data residency
Not verified
Open source
No
Self-hostable
No
Licence
Proprietary
Redaction
Removes the content
Programmatic access
HTTP API
Last availability check
Responded in 65 ms 21 October 2026

Checked automatically by our own runner, not reported by the vendor. 100% of our last 30 checks got a response.

What the redaction verdict rests on

From the vendor's own documentation, read 22 September 2026. Not tested by us.

“Just like people black-out or cut-out printed pages, AvePDF lets you permanently remove any information by drawing opaque areas over the content of the page and destroying the data behind it. … Once redacted, the information cannot be retrieved.”

What that does not establish

Vendor documentation, not a test we ran, and the redaction page itself does not say where the file sits while it is being redacted - the vendor's privacy policy at https://www.iubenda.com/privacy-policy/32291156 goes further than that page and names 'Hosting and backend infrastructure: Microsoft Azure', with a section headed 'Uploaded files to AvePDF and Document retention and use to improve our services' (read 2026-09-25) - but that material also states that the free service retains uploaded files and uses them to develop and improve its services, "including to train our models".

That is a question about the tool’s privacy rather than its redaction, and both decide whether it is safe to use.

https://avepdf.com/redact-pdf

What the vendor says

Claims are labelled rather than repeated as fact. Where we have checked something ourselves, it says so and shows when. Checked means we read the vendor's own page and it says what we recorded - not that we tested the behaviour, unless the note says we did.

  • “PDF redaction tool to permanently remove sensitive information”

    Checked by us - the source says this Read 22 September 2026

    Confirmed verbatim: the rendered page carries the line "PDF redaction tool to permanently remove sensitive information", which is the claim unaltered, and it is the page's own strapline rather than a claim buried in copy. The render also establishes two things the record did not carry.

    First, the redaction engine is the group's own commercial technology rather than a third party's: the page states it is "Powered by Nutrient PDF Redaction (utilizing GdPicture.NET SDK)", and the home page at https://avepdf.com/ says 'We develop all the AvePDF engines. Unlike our competitors, we have complete control over our technologies so that you can benefit from the fastest and most powerful tools.' The apparent contradiction resolves because AvePDF, Nutrient and GdPicture are one company - the same site's banner reads 'Orpalis is now Nutrient', its footer 'Copyright 2017-2026 Orpalis Imaging SAS d/b/a Nutrient', and the privacy policy at https://www.iubenda.com/privacy-policy/32291156 names 'Orpalis Imaging SAS d/b/a Nutrient' as Owner and Data Controller (all read 2026-09-25) - so what matters is not that the engine belongs to somebody else but that it is a shared group asset, the same commercial SDK that also sits in this index, rather than a redaction engine written for this free front end.

    Second, the vendor's own flow is two-step - draw marks, then "Apply all redactions" - so a saved file between the two steps is unchanged. Our own attempt to test this tool on 2026-09-17 did not complete: the fixture uploaded, but the editor renders its page preview in a way the harness could not locate, so nothing was redacted and no output was produced.

    The permanence therefore remains the vendor's wording, corroborated by nothing we have observed.

    Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://avepdf.com/redact-pdf
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    9e3d5dd216b904e112bcdee3789398a39447f8cd3b1c65feb34d3935dfd74fbd
    Note
    the method says raw; the saved artifact is a rendered read

    How we checked

    Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://avepdf.com/redact-pdf re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-21. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-avepdf-com-redact-pdf-840b89f0.txt.

    What this hash proves, and what it does not

Each claim is quoted from the vendor's own pages. This section describes what we have and have not checked - it is not a judgement about anyone.

Sponsorship is distribution, not an endorsement or a promise of search rankings, AI citations, traffic, or sales. This listing is a free entry, compiled from published sources.

Visit AvePDF Report a problem

Related reading

How this record was put together

Editorial review.
No editor has signed this record off. That is not the same as nothing having been checked, and the lines below say what has.
Source reading.
1 claim taken from the vendor's own pages, read between 22 September 2026 and 22 September 2026.
Website availability.
The vendor's site was last checked on 21 October 2026.
Behaviour testing.
We have not run this tool ourselves, so everything here rests on the vendors’ own pages.

Sources: avepdf.com pages and its served JavaScript bundle; avepdf.com pricing API; AvePDF privacy notice (iubenda); Orpalis launch press release. Read from the JavaScript bundle because the site is a client-rendered React app that returns no page copy to a plain fetch; the pages were then rendered on 2026-09-25 with scripts/render-page.mjs, which produced 5,338 bytes of visible text from https://avepdf.com/redact-pdf and 6,664 bytes from https://avepdf.com/, and those renders are the basis for the engine and hosting statements here. The engine disclosure is the redact page's 'Powered by Nutrient PDF Redaction (utilizing GdPicture.NET SDK)' and 'AvePDF is built on Nutrient's enterprise-grade PDF SDK', read against the home page's 'We develop all the AvePDF engines.' and its banner 'Orpalis is now Nutrient'; the privacy policy at https://www.iubenda.com/privacy-policy/32291156 names 'Orpalis Imaging SAS d/b/a Nutrient' as Owner and Data Controller, names 'Hosting and backend infrastructure: Microsoft Azure', and carries the section 'Uploaded files to AvePDF and Document retention and use to improve our services'.