Comparison
A Smallpdf alternative that does not count your tasks
YoursTools has 22 PDF tools that run entirely inside your browser tab. No account, no daily cap, nothing uploaded. This page compares them with Smallpdf properly, including the things Smallpdf does that we cannot.
Why people go looking for a Smallpdf alternative
Smallpdf is a good product with a large and well-earned user base, and most people searching for an alternative are not unhappy with the software. They have run into one of four things.
- The free tier's daily task limit. This is the overwhelming reason. Free use is metered to a couple of tasks a day, which is fine right up until the afternoon you need to merge four documents before a deadline and the third one asks you to upgrade.
- The file has to be uploaded. Plenty of people cannot put a client contract, a payslip, a medical letter or anything covered by an NDA onto a third party's servers, whatever the deletion policy says. Often that is a legal constraint rather than a preference.
- The sign-in prompt. Creating an account to finish a thirty-second job is a disproportionate ask.
- They need the tool once. A subscription for something you will do twice a year is bad value however good the software is.
If none of those describe you, Smallpdf is probably still the right answer, and the rest of this page will tell you where.
The short answer
Use YoursTools if you want unlimited free PDF editing with nothing uploaded and no account, and your work is the everyday kind: merging, splitting, compressing, rotating, cropping, page numbers, watermarks, passwords, and converting to and from images.
Use Smallpdf if you need OCR on scanned documents, e-signatures with an audit trail, conversion to and from Word or Excel, desktop and phone apps, or shared team billing. Those are real features and we do not have any of them.
At a glance
| YoursTools | Smallpdf | |
|---|---|---|
| Where files are processed | In your browser tab | On their servers, EU-hosted |
| Upload required | No | Yes |
| Account required | No | Free use is limited without one |
| Free daily task limit | None | A small daily cap |
| Cost to remove limits | Not applicable | Pro subscription, in the region of 9 to 15 US dollars a month depending on billing cycle |
| Maximum file size | Whatever your device holds in memory | Tiered by plan |
| PDF tools | 22 | Comparable, plus Office conversion |
| Other tools on the same site | 858, across 13 other categories | Documents only |
| OCR for scanned pages | No | Yes |
| E-signature | No | Yes |
| PDF to and from Word, Excel, PowerPoint | No | Yes |
| Desktop and mobile apps | No | Yes |
| Cloud storage and file history | No | Yes, on Pro |
| Team seats and central billing | No | Yes |
| Real AES password encryption | Yes, via qpdf | Yes |
| Remove a password you know | Yes | Yes |
| Works offline once the page has loaded | Yes | Desktop app only |
Where your files actually go
This is the one difference that is structural rather than a matter of degree, so it is worth being precise about both sides of it.
The hosted model. You pick a file, it is uploaded over TLS to the vendor's servers, decrypted there, processed by their software, and the result comes back. The file then sits on their infrastructure until a deletion timer expires. Both Smallpdf and iLovePDF run this model competently: EU-hosted infrastructure, encryption in transit, published deletion windows, and a contractual commitment not to look at your content. For the overwhelming majority of documents that is completely fine, and it is precisely what buys you OCR, very large files and working phone apps.
The in-browser model. YoursTools ships the PDF machinery to you instead of
shipping your file to us. The page loads
pdf.js,
pdf-lib and
qpdf compiled to WebAssembly, all served from our own
domain rather than a third-party CDN, and your file is read with the browser's own
FileReader. It never goes onto the network, because there is no server to send it
to: the whole site is static files.
You do not have to take that on trust, which is the entire point of doing it this way. Open your browser's network tab and watch a merge run. Or load the page, switch off your wi-fi, and use the tool anyway. It keeps working.
One honest caveat. The page itself is funded by advertising, so it loads Google's analytics and ad scripts the way most free tool sites do, and those scripts can tell that somebody opened a PDF page. They never see the document, because the document never leaves the tab. The difference in one sentence: we can see that you used the merge tool, and we cannot see what you merged.
What the free tier actually feels like
Feature tables flatten the thing that matters most day to day, which is friction. On Smallpdf's free tier a handful of tasks is a pleasant experience and the next one is a paywall. That is a legitimate business model, and it is what pays for the OCR and the apps. It does mean the free tier is designed as a sample rather than as a tool.
On YoursTools there is no counter to hit, because nothing on our side is doing the work. Merging thirty files is the same non-event as merging two, and nobody is upsold at any point because there is nothing to sell. The trade is that you are looking at ads, and that the heavy lifting is being done by your own laptop.
The trade-off runs the other way too. Processing in your browser means the work is done by your device, so a 400-page scanned report can be slow on an old phone, and a file large enough to exhaust the tab's memory will fail where a server would have chewed through it. There is no plan you can buy to fix that. If you routinely handle very large documents, a hosted service is genuinely the better tool and we would rather say so here than waste your afternoon.
What Smallpdf does that we do not
Four of these matter, and if you need any of them this comparison is already over.
- OCR. Smallpdf reads text out of scanned pages and photographs. Our PDF to text tool only extracts a text layer that is already in the file, so a scan comes back empty. If your document came from a scanner or a phone camera, use Smallpdf.
- E-signature. Requesting, collecting and tracking signatures with an audit trail is a whole product, not a feature we quietly omitted.
- Office conversion. PDF to Word is probably the most common PDF task there is, and doing it well needs a layout engine that is not realistic to ship into a browser tab. We do not offer it in either direction.
- Apps, storage and teams. Desktop and mobile apps, saved file history, Google Drive and Dropbox integration and shared billing all follow from having accounts, which we deliberately do not have.
What we do that Smallpdf does not
- No metering, ever. No task counter, no plan, no upsell at step three.
- Nothing is uploaded. Which means no retention window to think about, no question about jurisdiction, and nothing for us to lose in a breach.
- Real encryption without a subscription. Password protection applies genuine AES encryption through qpdf, and unlock PDF removes it again when you know the password. Both free, both local.
- 858 other tools on the same site. The PDF category sits next to 116 finance calculators, 148 developer utilities, 150 unit converters and nine other categories. Most people arrive for one thing and bookmark the site for something unrelated.
- Every page shows its working. Each tool page explains the method it uses and, where there is a formula, prints a worked example generated by running the tool itself.
So which should you use
Use Smallpdf if your documents are scans that need OCR, you need signatures, you convert to and from Office formats, you want the same tools on a phone or as a desktop app, your files are very large, or you are buying for a team that needs one invoice.
Use YoursTools if you are doing everyday PDF work, you have hit the daily limit once too often, your documents are confidential enough that uploading them is not an option, you do not want another account, or you would rather not pay monthly for something you need occasionally.
Plenty of people sensibly use both: free browser tools for the routine jobs, and a hosted service for the two or three tasks a year that genuinely need a server.
The 22 PDF tools
All free, all in the browser, no account:
There is more on what compression actually does in our write-up of PDF compression, and the reasoning behind the whole approach is in why we run everything in your browser. If you are also weighing up iLovePDF, we compare Smallpdf and iLovePDF against each other.
Common questions
Is YoursTools really free, or is there a paid tier later?
Every tool on the site is free, and there is no paid tier, no trial and no sign-in. The site is funded by advertising. Nothing is held back behind a plan, because there are no plans.
How many PDF tasks can I run per day?
As many as you like. There is no counter, because there is no account to attach one to and no server metering the work. The processing happens on your own device, so the only real limit is your patience.
Do my files get uploaded anywhere?
No. The PDF tools read your file with the browser’s own FileReader and process it with pdf.js, pdf-lib and qpdf compiled to WebAssembly, all served from our domain. You can confirm it: open the network tab while a tool runs, or disconnect from the internet after the page has loaded and use it offline.
Can YoursTools OCR a scanned document?
No, and this is the clearest reason to use Smallpdf instead. Our PDF to text tool extracts a text layer that already exists in the file. If your PDF is a photograph or a scan with no text layer, it comes back empty. Smallpdf has real OCR.
Does the protect PDF tool apply real encryption?
Yes. It uses qpdf compiled to WebAssembly to apply genuine AES encryption with the password you choose, not a visual watermark or a viewer-level restriction. The matching unlock tool removes encryption from a file when you already know the password.
Can I convert a PDF to Word on YoursTools?
No. PDF to Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and the conversions back the other way, are not in our catalogue. Smallpdf and iLovePDF both do them well. If that is the job in front of you, use one of them.
Competitor features, limits and prices on this page were checked against each vendor's own site on 10 September 2026. Plans change: follow the links above to confirm current terms before you decide. If something here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it.