PDF Tools — Merge, split, convert, compress, encrypt, OCR — every PDF workflow.

How Pickrack's PDF tools differ from Smallpdf, iLovePDF, and Adobe

Most online PDF tools are server-side: you upload your file, the site processes it on their hardware, and you download the result. That model has three costs you don't see at first — your file passes through someone else's server, you hit daily quotas (Smallpdf gives 2 free tasks per day, iLovePDF puts most things behind a Premium upsell), and you trust the privacy claim with no way to verify it. Adobe Acrobat Pro side-steps the upload concern but charges $19.99 per month. For most people, that math is poor for what is essentially a once-or-twice-a-month task.

Pickrack splits its 16 PDF tools into two paths depending on what each operation actually requires. Six tools — merge, split, rotate, watermark, JPG to PDF, and PDF to JPG — run entirely in your browser. Your file is loaded into browser memory using pdf-lib or PDF.js, processed in JavaScript, and downloaded back. The server never sees the file. You can confirm this by opening DevTools and watching the Network tab while you click the tool button — no upload requests fire.

The remaining ten tools — compress, unlock, password-protect (AES-256), Word↔PDF, PPTX↔PDF, EPUB↔PDF, and PDF→Markdown — need a server because they shell out to native binaries that have no browser equivalent. Compression uses Ghostscript; unlock and AES-256 protection use qpdf; Word and PowerPoint conversion use LibreOffice headless; EPUB conversion uses Calibre's ebook-convert. For these, your file is written to a unique /tmp directory, processed, the output streamed back, and the temp directory deleted in a finally block — typically within seconds. No database, no logging of file contents, no leak.

When to use which Pickrack PDF tool

• Combining PDFs (e.g., bank statements into a year-end archive) — use Merge PDF. Browser-side, drag-to-reorder, no quality loss.
• Extracting specific pages — use Split PDF with notation like 1-3, 5, 7-10.
• Reducing file size for email — use Compress PDF. Three quality presets; Medium typically gets you under the 25MB Gmail attachment limit.
• Sharing a contract privately — use Protect PDF for AES-256 password protection.
• Converting a PDF to editable Word — use PDF to Word. Best results on PDFs with a real text layer; scanned PDFs need OCR first.
• Feeding a long PDF to ChatGPT or Claude — use PDF to Markdown. LLMs understand Markdown structure natively, which gives sharper answers than chat-with-PDF.

Every tool below is free with no daily limit, no signup, no watermark on output, and no upsell. The site is funded by display advertising on text-content pages (this hub, blog posts) and by affiliate commissions on unrelated paid tools we review. We have no premium tier and no plans for one. If you would rather self-host the entire suite, the source is on GitHub under MIT license.