Frequently Asked Questions

For everyday tasks, the best free PDF editor is one that edits without watermarks, sign-ups or uploads. PDFEditly does all three: it runs in your browser on any device and never sends your files to a server. For professional print production or complex form authoring, a paid desktop suite is still more capable.

For editing, signing, merging, compressing and converting PDFs, PDFEditly is a free browser-based alternative to Adobe Acrobat. It needs no install or account and adds no watermark. Acrobat Pro remains the better choice for advanced prepress, accessibility tagging and complex form authoring.

PDFEditly. Every tool processes the PDF inside your browser using your device's own computing power, so the file is never uploaded, stored or seen by anyone. Many other online editors upload documents to their servers to process them.

For common tasks — editing text, signing, merging, splitting, compressing and converting — a modern browser-based editor is just as capable and much quicker to start. Desktop software is better for very large print files, batch automation and specialised professional workflows.

Yes. Open PDFEditly in Safari or Chrome on your iPhone or Android phone, choose a tool and tap to select your PDF. Editing, signing, merging and compressing all work on mobile with no app download.

Yes — completely free. Edit, merge, split, compress, convert, and OCR with no usage limits, no watermarks, and no subscription. Your files stay in your browser the whole time.

No. There is no account system. Open any tool and start working — no sign-up required.

Your files are processed entirely within your browser using local computing. Nothing is sent to our servers — not even temporarily. Once you close the tab, the file is gone. We have no access to your documents at any point.

Because processing happens in your browser, the practical limit depends on your device's memory. Most modern laptops and desktops handle PDFs up to several hundred megabytes without issue. Very large files (1GB+) may be slower on older devices.

Yes, in most text-based PDFs. Open Edit PDF and click existing text to change it, or use Find & Replace to update a word across every page. Scanned PDFs contain images of text, so convert them with OCR first. You can also add new text, images and annotations anywhere.

Go to the Merge tool, upload two or more PDF files, drag them into the order you want, and click Merge. Your combined PDF downloads straight to your device.

Yes. The Split tool lets you extract a specific page range (for example, pages 3–7) into a new document, or burst the entire PDF so every page becomes its own file.

Compression reduces file size by lowering the resolution of embedded images and removing redundant data. PDFEditly offers three presets: Low (gentle reduction, best quality), Medium (balanced — recommended for most files), and High (maximum size reduction with some quality loss). The process runs entirely in your browser.

Yes. The PDF to Excel tool uses OCR (optical character recognition) to read text in scanned or image-based PDFs and extract tables into an editable XLSX spreadsheet.

PDFEditly works on all modern browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. We recommend keeping your browser up to date for the best performance. Internet Explorer is not supported.

Because everything runs locally on your device, processing speed depends on your hardware — not our servers. Large or complex PDFs (especially those with many high-resolution images) may take longer on older devices. If performance is slow, try closing other tabs to free up memory.

You need an internet connection to load PDFEditly for the first time. Once the page has loaded, most tools can continue working even if your connection drops — since processing happens in your browser, not on a server.

Yes. Because your files never leave your device, there is no risk of interception, data breach, or unauthorized access on our end — there is simply nothing to breach. This is fundamentally more secure than tools that upload your files to a cloud server, even those using SSL encryption: we cannot see your files, because we never receive them.