About PDFLight

PDFLight is a free PDF editor that runs entirely inside your web browser. Your documents are never uploaded to a server — because there is no server to upload them to.

Why it exists

Almost every free "online PDF tool" works the same way: you upload your file, a server somewhere processes it, and you download the result. It works, and it is convenient. But it means handing a document — a contract, a payslip, an ID, a medical record — to a third party you know nothing about, and trusting them to delete it.

Modern browsers no longer make that trade-off necessary. They are perfectly capable of reading, rewriting and re-encoding a PDF on their own. PDFLight is what you get when you take that seriously: the entire editor is a piece of JavaScript that runs on your machine. Merging, splitting, rotating, signing, converting — all of it happens locally, in memory, on your device.

What that means in practice

  • No upload. Your files are never transmitted over the network.
  • No account. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to log into.
  • No limits. No watermarks, no "3 files per hour", no paywall.
  • Works offline. Install it as an app and it keeps working with no connection at all.
  • Fast. There is no round-trip to a server, so large files are handled at the speed of your own machine.

What it can do

Open several PDFs at once in tabs. Reorder, rotate, duplicate and delete pages. Merge documents together or split one into several. Add a signature, text or highlights. Insert page numbers or a watermark. Edit document properties. Convert images to PDF, or a PDF to images or plain text. All of it, in the browser.

How it is funded

PDFLight is free and has no paid tier. Hosting is paid for by advertising displayed on the home page and on the tool pages — never inside the editor, and never anywhere near your documents. Advertisers have no access to your files for the simple reason that nobody does: they never leave your browser.

Get in touch

Feedback, a bug, a feature you are missing? Contact us — it goes straight to the person who builds the thing.