PDFgear
Free cross-platform PDF editor, converter and signer with an AI copilot.
Operated by PDF GEAR TECH PTE. LTD.
Opens the vendor's own site.
Jobs covered
Open a task to see exactly what the vendor documentation supports.
Edit
Browse all edit toolsediting PDFs with PDFgear, where the PDF editor page documents a direct text-editing mode that can search for, select, copy and change existing PDF text, identify and change fonts and sizes, and edit existing text boxes and objects, plus inserting images, text boxes, hyperlinks and shapes, highlighting, stamping, watermarking, annotating, adding sticky notes, underlining and striking through text, filling and creating forms, and organising pages; the scope records the documented direct text and object editing and annotation on the installed Windows, macOS, iOS and Android builds, makes no layout-fidelity guarantee, and leaves OCR and conversion to their own jobs
Convert
Browse all convert toolsconverting documents with PDFgear, where the PDF converter page documents support for 60+ document formats, Microsoft Office documents and image formats, converting images, Excel and text to PDF and converting PDFs to other formats, with batch conversion and custom page ranges and a claim that original formatting is retained; the vendor also says some advanced conversions use cloud processing, so the scope records the documented conversion directions and batch mode, notes the cloud exception for some advanced conversions, and makes no fidelity guarantee
Merge
Browse all merge toolsmerging PDFs with PDFgear, where the Merge PDF page documents joining two or more PDFs into one document, arranging files and pages and removing or reordering pages, with no watermark and no account required, and says the browser merging tool keeps files in the browser and processes them locally rather than uploading them for merging; the page claims merging without losing quality, which is recorded as marketing, and the scope makes no claim about preserving signatures, forms, links or annotations across a merge
Compress
Browse all compress toolscompressing PDFs with PDFgear, where the Compress PDF page documents three compression levels, Low for high quality and a larger file, Medium for a high-quality medium file and Strong for a less-quality smallest file, with no email or account required, and the tool uploads the file for processing in the browser; the scope records the three levels and the upload boundary and makes no lossless or specific size-reduction guarantee
Sign
Browse all sign toolssigning PDFs with PDFgear, where the Sign PDF page documents a browser-based electronic signature created by drawing, typing or uploading an image, with customisable colours and fonts, plus added text, preset stamps and images, and says the file stays in the browser and signing is processed locally; the page distinguishes this visual electronic signature from certificate-based digital signatures and says the certificate-backed signing, audit log and eIDAS/ESIGN workflow belong to eSignGear, a separate product built by the same team, so the scope is the visual electronic signature only and makes no certificate-authority, audit-trail, timestamping or independent legal-validity guarantee
OCR
Browse all ocr toolsrunning OCR with PDFgear, where the PDF OCR page documents converting scanned PDFs into editable document formats such as Word, TXT and RTF and copying text from scanned PDFs, with 30+ languages supported for OCR during PDF conversions and 10+ languages for area extraction OCR, and says direct conversion of scans into searchable, selectable and editable PDFs is still in development; the scope records the documented editable-output OCR and language figures and makes no accuracy guarantee and no searchable-PDF claim
Where your files are processed
Reported to stay on your device
Claimed by the vendor. Not yet independently verified. This covers the web service. We have not checked desktop app processing, and we do not extend the finding to it.
The vendor states that PDFgear processes files locally without storing user data, and the Windows, macOS, iOS and Android builds are installed applications that read and write local files. The same site also says certain advanced conversions run on PDFgear's Amazon Cloud servers and the AI copilot is cloud-based, so this holds for the core editing workflow but not every feature.
What it does
PDFgear is a cross-platform PDF application from PDF GEAR TECH PTE. LTD. in Singapore, with installed builds for Windows, macOS, iOS and Android plus browser-based tools.
It reads, edits and annotates PDFs, changes existing text and objects, fills forms, converts between PDF and Office or image formats, merges, splits, compresses, signs electronically and runs OCR on scans, with batch modes for conversion and OCR. It also bundles an AI copilot based on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service.
The vendor currently charges nothing and does not require sign-up.
Best for
Individuals and small teams who want a genuinely free all-round PDF editor with offline desktop editing, no account and no watermark.
Worth knowing
The vendor says the product is free today with no paid tier found on the pages read, but it also says advanced features may become paid options in future and that pricing is still under consideration, so the current free position should not be read as a permanent price promise. The installed Windows, macOS, iOS and Android builds process files locally for their core features, but some advanced conversions and the AI copilot are cloud-based: the privacy policy says AI features send PDF content, chat text and limited metadata to Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service.
The browser tools differ by tool: the Merge PDF and Sign PDF pages say the file stays in the browser and merging/signing happens locally, while the Compress PDF tool uploads the file and the online conversion tools rely on cloud processing. Signing in PDFgear is a visual electronic signature drawn, typed or uploaded and applied locally; the certificate-backed digital signature, audit trail and eIDAS/ESIGN workflow described alongside it belong to eSignGear, a separate product built by the same team, so PDFgear itself is not credited with certificate-based signing.
OCR converts scans into editable Word, TXT or RTF output with 30+ languages for conversions and 10+ for area extraction, but the vendor says direct scanned-to-searchable-PDF conversion is still in development and publishes no accuracy figure. Editing changes existing text and objects, with original formatting claimed to be preserved, but no layout-fidelity guarantee is made.
Merging claims no quality loss and no watermark, compression offers Low, Medium and Strong levels, and conversion covers 60+ formats; none of these carries a lossless, fidelity or preservation guarantee.
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
- Windows · macOS · iOS · Android · Web
- Website
- pdfgear.com
- Requires an account
- No
- Watermark on the free tier
- Not verified
- Maximum file size
- Not verified
- Batch processing
- Yes
- Data residency
- Not verified
- Open source
- No
- Self-hostable
- No
- Licence
-
Proprietary freeware.
Proprietary freeware. PDFgear is operated by PDF GEAR TECH PTE.
LTD., 91 Bencoolen Street, #05-09 Sunshine Plaza, Singapore 189652, the entity named in the privacy policy last updated 23 March 2026. The product is free to use today with no paid tier found on the pages read, and the vendor says advanced features may become paid options in future with pricing still under consideration, so no price is asserted.
No open-source licence or source distribution was published. The AI copilot sends PDF content and chat text to Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, and some advanced conversions and browser tools use cloud processing, while the installed Windows, macOS, iOS and Android builds and the browser merge/sign tools are documented as local processing.
- Redaction
- Not determined
- Programmatic access
- None
- Last availability check
- Responded in 206 ms 21 October 2026
Checked automatically by our own runner, not reported by the vendor. 100% of our last 30 checks got a response.
Why we have not determined this
What that does not establish
Downgraded from removes_content on 2026-09-22. The only English PDFgear material found is an article about REMOVING TEXT, which is a different operation from redaction and does not describe the mechanism.
No vendor page states that marked content leaves the file.
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.
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“Read, edit, convert, merge, and sign PDF files across devices, for completely free and without signing up.”
Checked by us - the source says this Read 22 September 2026
Confirmed verbatim: the sentence appears unaltered immediately below the hero heading "PDF Tasks Made Easy", with a 4.9 rating and a "10,000+ Reviews" count beside it. The page then does something unusual for a free product: it devotes a section to the economics, headed "Why Trust PDFgear - Curious about why PDFgear is completely free, how secure it is, and how we sustain it without charging?" So the claim is not left as an unexplained promise.
Worth recording alongside it that the same vendor's Windows page answers the same question with "why PDFgear is free for the moment", which is a weaker commitment than the homepage implies, and that phrasing is on another page rather than this one.
Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte
Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
- From
- the text a browser renders
- SHA-256
- 59cb82cf3354fce635861afd370065c39385ed8a23ccf1b40b19fc6f1323a937
How we checked
Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://www.pdfgear.com/ 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-www-pdfgear-com-ea349083.txt.
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“Absolutely, PDFgear ensures data security by processing files locally without storing any user data.”
Checked by us - the source says this Read 21 September 2026
Confirmed verbatim. The sentence is the answer to an FAQ item headed "Is my data safe with PDFgear?", and it is the vendor's own wording unaltered.
Two things about the page it sits on belong in the record. First, the same FAQ block gives the platform list - "PDFgear works with Windows 10, 11, macOS, iOS and our online tools support a range of other devices" - so PDFgear also ships browser-based tools, and "processing files locally" can be true of the desktop application and cannot be true of those.
The FAQ answers for the product as a whole without drawing that line, and a reader coming to the claim from the Windows page could reasonably take it as a statement about the company. Second, the answer's supporting evidence is a link to a marketing page rather than to a privacy policy: it points to a page promising "more proofs and tests of its safety".
Recorded as the vendor's description; no control was run.
Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte
Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
- From
- the raw HTTP response
- SHA-256
- cf2630431f7c357b7d06d9929339d0f7631fd4a07d23ec6dc5e1d9928366985c
How we checked
The FAQ answer does not appear in the rendered text of https://www.pdfgear.com/pdfgear-for-windows/ (visible text 4542 bytes, no match), because the FAQ block is not in the rendered document, so the claim was read from the raw HTML response the server sends: 18493 bytes saved and hashed. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of that raw response, not of the rendered text.
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.