The story
Good tools shouldn’t cost $12 a month.
You know the routine. You need to merge two PDFs, one time, and suddenly you’re dodging paywalls, creating an account, watching a watermark land on your file, or reading “2 free conversions left today.” For a task your computer could do in half a second.
TryDeputize is the other way of doing it: one place with all the small tools everyone needs (PDFs, images, audio, video, and the new AI stuff), every one of them free, no account, no catch. Built by one person, shipped one tool at a time, with the build log out in the open.
The rules
01
Free forever
Every tool, fully working, at no cost. No premium tier holding the good parts hostage.
02
No signup
You came to merge a PDF, not to create an account. No email walls, no onboarding.
03
Your files are yours
Files are uploaded to our server only to run the tool you asked for. They are never sold, never used to train anything, and cleaned up on a schedule.
04
Built in the open
A public build log, honest statuses, and a roadmap you can argue with on GitHub.
How it stays free
One lean, self-hosted stack. Every tool runs through our own server: you upload, the job enters a work queue, workers process it, you download the result. One small machine, one Docker stack, no per-user SaaS bills to pass on to anyone.
The AI rides on open models. Transcription, summaries, and translations run on fast, efficient open models, so each run costs a fraction of a cent.
And later: ads, maybe. If usage grows past what pocket money covers, we’ll add clearly-marked ads. That’s the whole business model. Never paywalls, never locked features, never selling your files or your data.
What’s coming, in order
The quick wins: PDF merge and split, image resize and convert, QR codes, counters, passwords, JSON.
Transcription and AI writing: audio and video to text, subtitles, summarize, translate, rewrite.
The heavy conversions: OCR, PDF to Word, compression, background removal, chat with PDF.
The fun ones: AI image generation, upscaling, text to speech.
Say hi, or ask for a tool.
The roadmap bends to what people actually need. The fastest way to reach the workshop is GitHub.