PDFsam
Desktop PDF split and merge apps - Basic is free and open source, others paid.
Operated by Sober Lemur S.r.l.
Opens the vendor's own site.
Jobs covered
Open a task to see exactly what the vendor documentation supports.
Merge
Browse all merge toolsmerging PDFs with PDFsam, where the PDFsam Basic merge page documents combining multiple PDF files into one, arranging the files in the desired order, selecting the resulting file name and running the merge on Windows, macOS and Linux, and the PDFsam Visual page lists Merge PDF and Alternate Mix as free tools that continue to work after the trial and adds Split by bookmarks and Split by size; the scope records the documented combine and ordering operations and the free-tool boundary, with no claim about preserving signatures, forms, links or annotations across a merge
Compress
Browse all compress toolscompressing PDFs with PDFsam, where the PDFsam Visual page documents Compress PDF by choosing the quality and resolution of the images and selecting the compression settings to reduce file size, and its FAQ says PDFsam Basic performs only some optimisations on generated files and that PDFsam Visual or PDFsam Enhanced is needed for true PDF compression; the scope records Visual compression with adjustable image quality and resolution and makes no lossless or specific size-reduction guarantee, while noting Basic is not a true compression route
Edit
Browse all edit toolsediting PDFs with PDFsam, where the PDFsam Enhanced PDF editor page documents modifying or adding text, annotations, images and links, redacting sensitive content, adding watermarks, headers, footers, comments and shapes, and digital signatures, with PDFsam Enhanced 7.0 being a Windows-only paid application in Standard, Pro and Pro+OCR tiers; the scope records the documented editing and content-addition capabilities of Enhanced, makes no fidelity or layout-stability guarantee, and leaves redaction to the redaction field
Convert
Browse all convert toolsconverting PDFs to Office formats and creating PDFs from 300+ formats with PDFsam Enhanced on Windows, where the free view and create capability requires registration; not PDFsam Basic or Visual
Sign
Browse all sign toolssigning PDFs with PDFsam, where the PDFsam Enhanced Secure module documents protecting PDF files with 256-bit AES encryption, restricting permissions and adding a digital signature using a digital certificate, listed for the Pro and Pro+OCR tiers of the Windows-only Enhanced 7.0 application; the scope records digital-certificate signing in Enhanced Secure and makes no certificate-authority, trust-validation, timestamping or independent legal-validity guarantee
OCR
Browse all ocr toolsrunning OCR with PDFsam, where the PDFsam Enhanced OCR module documents recognising text within images and scanned documents and turning them into editable PDF files, including batch recognition of multiple files, listed only for the Pro+OCR Advanced tier of the Windows-only Enhanced 7.0 application; the scope records the documented OCR capability and tier boundary and makes no accuracy figure, language count or handwriting claim
Protect
Browse all protect toolsprotecting PDFs with PDFsam, where the PDFsam Visual page documents Protect PDF with a password and permissions and Unprotect PDF removing permissions and the password, and the PDFsam Enhanced Secure module documents protecting PDF files with 256-bit AES encryption and restricting permissions in the Pro and Pro+OCR tiers of the Windows-only Enhanced 7.0 application; the scope records the documented password and permission features across Visual and Enhanced, makes no claim about how other readers enforce permissions, and leaves redaction to the redaction field
Where your files are processed
No server involved
Desktop applications for Windows, macOS and Linux. There is no web service to upload to.
Stated plainly by the vendor: files never leave your computer, and the desktop applications do not upload PDF content. The paid editions do contact their servers for licence checks and updates.
What it does
PDFsam is a family of desktop applications that run on the user's own computer. PDFsam Basic, currently version 6.0.6, is a free AGPL-3.0 tool for merging, splitting, extracting, rotating and mixing PDFs on Windows, macOS and Linux.
PDFsam Visual, currently version 7.1.0, adds compression, cropping, metadata cleaning, password protection with permissions and unprotecting, and also runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, with a 14-day trial and a paid per-user subscription or perpetual licence. PDFsam Enhanced, currently version 7.0, is a Windows-only PDF editor sold in Standard, Pro and Pro+OCR Advanced tiers, adding conversion, forms, secure PDFs with 256-bit AES and digital-certificate signatures, OCR and editing.
Every edition processes files locally on the user's own computer.
Best for
Anyone who wants offline, no-upload PDF processing - particularly a free, dependable split and merge tool across Windows, macOS and Linux.
Worth knowing
The editions differ sharply. PDFsam Basic 6.0.6 is free and AGPL-3.0 and covers merge, split, extract, rotate and mix on Windows, macOS and Linux; it performs only incidental optimisation rather than true compression.
PDFsam Visual 7.1.0 is proprietary and also runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, with a 14-day free trial, a paid subscription at GBP 29 per user per year or a GBP 49 perpetual licence, and a 14-day money-back guarantee; after the trial, Merge PDF, Alternate Mix, Split by bookmarks and Split by size continue to work for free. PDFsam Enhanced 7.0 is Windows-only and sold in Standard, Pro and Pro+OCR Advanced tiers at USD 69, 89 and 129 per user per year, with free View and Create modules and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
OCR, conversion, editing and digital-certificate signing are Enhanced capabilities, not Basic or Visual ones; secure PDFs with 256-bit AES encryption, permission restrictions and digital signatures are in the Pro and Pro+OCR tiers, and OCR is Pro+OCR Advanced only. The Desktop editions process files locally and do not upload document content; Visual may contact the vendor's servers for licensing, update and news checks, and the privacy policy says the data controller is Sober Lemur S.r.l. in Italy.
The EULAs are governed by Italian law. No hosted processing surface exists.
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 · Linux
- Website
- pdfsam.org
- 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
- Yes
- Self-hostable
- No
- Licence
-
PDFsam Basic is free software under AGPL-3.0.
PDFsam Basic is free software under AGPL-3.0. PDFsam Visual and PDFsam Enhanced are proprietary and licensed under their own EULAs with Sober Lemur S.r.l., Via Rosemberg 4, 42021 Bibbiano (Reggio Emilia), Italy, VAT IT02771170350, REA RE-312122, under Italian law; the EULAs are dated 1 September 2023.
PDFsam Visual is sold as a subscription at GBP 29 per user per year, VAT inclusive, with recurring billing, or as a perpetual licence at GBP 49 one time, VAT inclusive, with a 14-day free trial, a 14-day money-back guarantee and two computers per user. PDFsam Enhanced is Windows-only and sold per user per year at USD 69 for Standard, USD 89 for Pro and USD 129 for Pro+OCR Advanced, VAT inclusive, with free View and Create modules, a 30-day money-back guarantee and volume discounts on five or more licences.
No LULU Software provision appears on the current EULAs or about page, so the earlier LULU attribution is removed.
- Redaction
- Removes the content
- Programmatic access
- None
- Last availability check
- Responded in 220 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.
“PDFsam Enhanced has a Redaction tool. This will permanently delete information from your document. It’s the digital equivalent of redacting physical documents.”
What that does not establish
Vendor support documentation, not a test we ran. It describes PDFsam ENHANCED, which is a different and paid edition from the free PDFsam Basic, and the page does not resolve which tier includes the tool - the edition question is the one that matters here.
The same vendor also publishes a whiteout article, and whiteout is the covering operation; the two must not be read as one feature.
https://support-enhanced.pdfsam.org/hc/en-us/articles/21705219146388-How-to-redact-my-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.
-
“Your files never leave your computer.”
Checked by us - the source says this Read 22 September 2026
Verbatim on the homepage, where it stands as its own line. The privacy-policy half of the original claim is recorded as a separate claim so that each rests on the page it actually came from.
Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte
Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
- Read
- https://pdfsam.org/
- From
- the text a browser renders
- SHA-256
- dcdafd99010e038dc7fda1302cc840016ec27d659d165474cec75c1b3c54247d
How we checked
Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://pdfsam.org/ re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and this sentence found in the rendered text. This claim was SPLIT on 2026-09-22 out of a longer one whose evidence spanned two pages.
One claim can carry one hash and one evidence file, so a two-source claim cannot be verified by a re-render at all - the pass read the homepage, found a short run of the longer claim's words, and reported it changed when it was in fact fully supported. Dividing it at the source boundary makes both halves checkable. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-pdfsam-org-a0cf9a64.txt.
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“All our applications process PDF files locally. No content in your PDF files is automatically sent or uploaded to our servers from our desktop applications.”
Checked by us - the source says this Read 22 September 2026
Verbatim on the privacy policy. The original single claim carried this and the homepage sentence together, which is why neither half could be verified on its own.
Standing: Re-read, and the recorded hash was not reproduced
Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
- From
- the raw HTTP response
- SHA-256
- ea695fee184e3b07ef1e40a94c0d53df8ceb9ebfbafe42f167074a33b23273fc
- Note
- neither the raw response nor a render reproduced the recorded hash (83404 chars, recorded ea695fee18…)
How we checked
Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://pdfsam.org/privacy-policy/ rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and this wording found in the rendered text. This claim was SPLIT on 2026-09-22 out of a longer one whose evidence spanned two pages.
One claim can carry one hash and one evidence file, so a two-source claim cannot be verified by a re-render at all - the pass read the homepage, found a short run of the longer claim's words, and reported it changed when it was in fact fully supported. Dividing it at the source boundary makes both halves checkable. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the rendered text, held as p9-pdfsam.txt - note that this is the RENDERED page, so it differs from the hash of the raw response the original method recorded; both are the same document read two ways.
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.
Related reading
- Which PDF tools really redact - which tools remove the content rather than cover it.
- Which PDF tools keep your file on your machine - what we count as processing on your own device.
- Open source PDF tools, and what their licences require - what open source does and does not tell you.