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Smallpdf

Browser PDF toolkit with 30+ tools and a Pro subscription, built in Switzerland.

Jobs Compress Merge Edit Convert Sign OCR Protect

Since 2013

Operated by Smallpdf AG

Visit Smallpdf

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 documents with Smallpdf, where the Compress PDF page offers a free browser-based compressor that accepts PDF, image, Word, Excel and PowerPoint files and says it compresses a PDF to the smallest possible size without losing quality, with the pricing comparison listing Basic compression on Free and Strong Compression as a Pro feature, and the tool pages stating files are deleted after one hour; the scope is the documented free compression and the Pro strong-compression tier, and the vendor's without-losing-quality wording is recorded as marketing rather than as a lossless guarantee, with no size-reduction percentage claimed

Merge Browse all merge tools

merging PDF documents with Smallpdf, where the Merge PDF tool combines files into one document, allows the merged pages to be previewed and reordered or deleted before saving, and accepts PDF and image inputs alongside Office formats on the wider tool set, with files deleted after one hour; the scope is the documented combine, preview, reorder and delete operations, with no claim about preserving signatures, forms or annotations across a merge

Edit Browse all edit tools

editing PDF documents with Smallpdf, where the Edit PDF page says users can add text, shapes, images, highlights, sticky notes and drawings, and use Organize mode to rearrange, merge, extract or split pages and export the result, while the page FAQ states that direct editing of existing text is a feature available with a Pro subscription and includes a 7-day trial; the scope is the documented free editing of additions and annotations and the Pro direct-text-editing feature, with no OCR claim because editing text on a scanned page is a different tool, and no claim of layout reflow

Convert Browse all convert tools

converting PDF documents with Smallpdf, where the PDF to Word converter turns a PDF into a DOCX file for free, offers an OCR option for scanned PDFs as a Pro feature, handles other Microsoft Office formats and the wider conversion tool set, and keeps the PDF formatting according to the page; the scope is the documented conversion directions and the Pro OCR-assisted scanned-PDF route, with no fidelity guarantee and no conversion of formats not listed

Sign Browse all sign tools

signing PDF documents with Smallpdf, where the Sign PDF tool lets users create a signature by typing, drawing or uploading an image, add initials, dates, text and checkboxes, and place the signature on a PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT, PNG or JPG file, with files deleted after one hour unless saved to an account; the page FAQ distinguishes an electronic signature from a digital signature that uses encryption and certificates, and describes eSign for teams as a separate dedicated e-signing platform, Sign.com, included in the subscription; the scope is the documented electronic signature and form-marking workflow, and no certificate-based digital signature, timestamping or long-term validation claim is made for it

OCR Browse all ocr tools

running optical character recognition with Smallpdf, where the PDF OCR page says the browser tool makes scanned PDFs searchable and selectable, recognises text in scanned files, can produce a searchable PDF or feed the text into the PDF to Word converter, and says files are deleted after one hour; the page describes no language selection or language list, and the converter FAQ describes the OCR option for scanned PDFs as a Pro feature while the OCR page presents the tool as free within plan limits; the scope is the documented searchable-PDF and searchable-Word workflow, with no language count, no accuracy guarantee and no claim of handwriting-specific recognition

Protect Browse all protect tools

protecting PDF documents with Smallpdf, where the Protect PDF page offers browser password protection with AES 128-bit encryption, TLS-secured transfers, no account required, and deletion of files after one hour, and states that the document password is never saved; the page documents a single AES 128-bit level only and describes no permission flags or alternate algorithm, so the scope is AES 128-bit password encryption with that one-hour retention, with no claim about permissions, AES 256 or enforcement by other readers

Where your files are processed

Mixed - depends on version and feature

The vendor's own documentation separates them. On the device: Windows. On their servers: Web. A single answer for the whole product would be wrong for one of them.

Smallpdf's privacy notice describes files being uploaded to its servers rather than processed in the page, so this is a cloud service and the note is the vendor's own. RETENTION IS NOW SCOPED RATHER THAN BLANKET, and the scope depends on the case: with an account, uploaded files are deleted within one hour unless you save them to your own file storage, and a saved file is deleted within 14 days of you asking for it to go; without an account, or whenever you are not signed in, there is no fixed period at all, only a deletion within a reasonable time after the file was last opened, and that clock restarts every time the file is reopened.

Somebody asked to sign a document through the eSign tool is in the second group. WHERE THE FILES ARE: uploaded files are processed on Hetzner servers in the European Union, and the notice states this is not permanent storage.

Smallpdf is a Swiss company and Switzerland holds an EU adequacy decision, but the notice permits transfers of personal data outside Switzerland and the EEA, naming Serbia and, for some support cases, the Philippines, with standard contractual clauses as the safeguard.

What it does

Smallpdf is a hosted web service bundling over thirty PDF utilities - compress, convert, merge, split, edit text, OCR, redact, sign and password protection - behind one browser interface, plus a Windows app and iOS and Android apps. Your file is uploaded to Smallpdf's servers, processed there, and the result downloaded again.

The free plan uses the same tools but caps downloads per day; Pro removes those limits and adds strong compression, OCR and the AI-powered tools; the pricing page displays Pro at GBP 6.75 a month billed as GBP 81.00 a year on its default yearly plan, with a monthly toggle for the other billing period.

Best for

People who want a broad, well-supported PDF toolkit that works on any device with nothing installed, and who are comfortable with cloud processing.

Worth knowing

Using a web tool uploads the file to Smallpdf's servers to be processed, so the answer for a confidential document depends on the policy of the organisation holding it rather than on a blanket rule. By default, a document you process is reachable by anyone holding its unique sharing link, which the notice says the user can turn off - check that before processing anything confidential.

The free tier is capped by daily download limits on most tools rather than by watermarks. The AI tools add their own 50 MB file cap on every plan.

The free plan's limits are not only downloads: the pricing comparison lists limited mobile app access, limited file size and a Sign.com free account capped at 2 documents a month, while the AI tools cap files at 50 MB and word counts differ by plan. Files uploaded to the web tools are deleted after one hour unless saved.

Direct text editing in the editor and the OCR option for scanned PDFs in the converter are Pro features, so the free editor adds text, shapes, images, highlights and sticky notes but does not edit existing text. The macOS desktop application is not supported as of 1 October 2021, so desktop coverage is Windows only; the iOS and Android download links redirect to the Smallpdf PDF Scanner mobile app rather than a full editor.

Signing inside Smallpdf is an electronic signature; certificate-based digital signing is not documented for it, and the separate Sign.com e-signing platform is the service named for team e-signature workflows.

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 · Windows · iOS · Android
Website
smallpdf.com
Requires an account
No
Free tier
Yes
Watermark on the free tier
Not verified
Maximum file size
Not verified
Batch processing
Yes
Data residency
Multiple regions
Open source
Not verified
Self-hostable
Not verified
Licence
Proprietary.

Proprietary. The Terms and Conditions are dated Zürich, January 2026, and form an agreement with Smallpdf AG, Steinstrasse 21, 8003 Zürich, Switzerland, governed by Swiss law; the Services include Smallpdf, Smallpdf PRO, Smallpdf Reader, Smallpdf Desktop and Smallpdf Mobile.

Plans are subscriptions: Free, Pro, Team for 2 to 19 seats and Business custom-quoted, with a 7-day free trial, and a paid subscription includes a Sign.com Premium subscription. Sign.com is a separate e-signing platform within the same subscription.

Redaction
Removes the content
Programmatic access
None
Last availability check
Responded in 656 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

Tested by us on 17 September 2026, on our own canary document rather than read off a product page.

What that does not establish

Tested on the web tool with our own canary document. It deletes the marked text from the page structure.

The vendor does not document a separate desktop or tier behaviour we can speak to.

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.

  • “Trusted by 1.7 billion people since 2013.”

    Checked by us - the source says this Read 21 September 2026

    Confirmed verbatim: the page reads "All the PDF tools you need. Built in Switzerland.

    Trusted by 1.7 billion people since 2013." It is the vendor's own figure and it is attributed to them. What the number counts is not stated - whether people, sessions, documents or visits - and no method or independent audit is published, so we have not verified it and cannot say what it measures.

    That is the whole of it.

    Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://smallpdf.com/pricing
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    aade39b1f6a681adcd12013e1aad50ed554155142c4daa6c6edf6c50a3371e21

    How we checked

    Same page and same read as the Smallpdf ISO 27001 claim verified earlier in this campaign: https://smallpdf.com/pricing rendered in headless Chrome on 2026-09-21, visible text 6274 bytes. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the rendered text.

    What this hash proves, and what it does not

  • “Smallpdf is ISO/IEC 27001 certified and GDPR, CCPA and nFADP compliant.”

    Checked by us - the source says this Read 21 September 2026

    Confirmed verbatim: "Smallpdf is ISO/IEC 27001 certified, GDPR, CCPA, and nFADP compliant." The sentence continues with a security statement the claim omits and which belongs with it: "Thanks to our TLS encryption technology, your documents are always processed with an added layer of security." That is transport encryption, and it says nothing about storage at rest or about who can read a file on the servers, so a reader should not take the compliance sentence and the encryption sentence together as a description of the same guarantee.

    The four named frameworks are again of two kinds: ISO/IEC 27001 is an auditable certification, while GDPR, CCPA and nFADP are data protection laws that an organisation complies with. No certification body, certificate number or audit date is given on the pricing page, and nothing here was independently verified.

    Recorded as the vendor's assertion.

    Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://smallpdf.com/pricing
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    aade39b1f6a681adcd12013e1aad50ed554155142c4daa6c6edf6c50a3371e21

    How we checked

    https://smallpdf.com/pricing rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs on 2026-09-21 (visible text 6274 bytes) and the claim checked against that text. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the rendered text.

    What this hash proves, and what it does not

  • “Permanently remove sensitive information from your documents with our free PDF redaction tool.”

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

    The marked string is GONE from the saved file, while the lines 40pt above and below it survived and so did the untouched second page - so the removal is localised rather than a whole-page flattening. The output contains zero image XObjects, so nothing was rasterised: the marked text is deleted from the page structure.

    This confirms a `removes_content` verdict that had rested on the vendor's own wording, and it is the direction of error that matters most, because a wrong "removes" tells a reader their redacted document is safe when the text is still inside it. Scope: the web tool, one document, one date.

    Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://smallpdf.com/redact-pdf
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    a35d645e6b39d2b7cced81e9ff19a7c57951610c0d49950b0a0279bea39ff780

    How we checked

    Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://smallpdf.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 2026-09-17. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-smallpdf-com-redact-pdf-eafa0ed2.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 Smallpdf 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.
3 claims taken from the vendor's own pages, read between 21 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: smallpdf.com pricing page (figures supplied by the site owner from the live page, September 2026); smallpdf.com compress-pdf and privacy pages. Vendor claims, not independently verified.

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