Comparison
What the free tiers actually allow.
Every comparison of free PDF tools says the same thing, which is that all of them are free and one of them is best. This one is just the numbers, and it says where we lose as well as where we win.
Where each number comes from. Every cell was read from that company's own pricing, FAQ, terms or privacy page on 11 September 2026. No roundups, no review sites. Where a company does not publish a figure, the cell says so rather than carrying a number somebody guessed, which is the thing that makes most pages like this useless.
| TryDeputize | iLovePDF | Smallpdf | PDF24 | TinyWow | Sejda | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Account neededTo finish an ordinary job on the free tier. | No | No | No, but 2 documents a dayhelp centre | No | No | No |
| Watermark on the result | No | Not stated | Not stated | Nostated | Not stated | Nostated |
| Cap on how much you can doPer day or per hour, on the free tier. Ours applies to speech only: Video to Text and Subtitle Generator share five transcriptions a day between them, because each one holds a worker for as long as the audio lasts. Every other tool in the table is uncapped. | None, except 5 speech jobs a day | No number published"Limited document processing" | 2 conversions a dayhelp centre, looks stale | None published | Not published | 3 tasks an houron every tool page |
| Largest fileFree tier. Several of these vary by tool rather than by plan. | 50 MB | 15 MB to 400 MB by tool100 MB on most | Not published"Limited" | Not publisheduploader set to 1000 MB | Not published | 5 MB to 100 MB by tool50 MB on most |
| Files in one job | 20 | 1 to 25 by tool25 on Merge | Paid feature | Not published | Not published | 1 free30 files an hour |
| How long uploads are kept | About 1 hour | 2 hourssigned documents, 5 years | 1 hour"for most tools" | 1 houror delete it yourself | 1 hour | 2 hours |
| Cheapest paid planPer month. Most assume you pay for a year up front. iLovePDF and Sejda price by country; these were read from a UK connection. | No paid tier | £5 a monthbilled yearly, £9 monthly | $9 a monthbilled yearly, $12 monthly | No paid tier | $15 a monthbilled yearly, $20 monthly | £7.50 a month |
| Tools that never uploadRunning entirely in the browser, with no file leaving your device. | 11 of 44 | None | None | Nonedesktop app instead | Not stated | Nonedesktop app instead |
Where we lose
File size. Ours stops at 50 MB. iLovePDF allows 100 MB on most tools and 400 MB on a couple, Sejda goes to 100 MB on compression, and PDF24 has no published cap at all. If your file is bigger than 50 MB, one of them is the right answer and we are not.
Breadth in one place. iLovePDF and Sejda have been at this for years and have tools we do not, including e-signing and PDF/A conversion.
No desktop app. PDF24, iLovePDF and Sejda all ship one, and a desktop app is the only way to process a large or sensitive file without uploading it.
Where we win
No cap on the file tools. Sejda stops you after three tasks an hour and Smallpdf after two documents a day. Every PDF and image tool here is uncapped, and there is no paid tier a counter would be pushing you toward. The one exception is speech: Video to Text and Subtitle Generator share five transcriptions a day, because each holds a worker for as long as the audio runs.
11 tools never upload anything. Every tool that works on text or a small file, from the barcode generator to the subtitle converter, runs inside the page. Nobody else in this table offers that in a browser; they point you at a desktop download instead.
The deletion is code you can read. Everyone here promises deletion. Ours is a scheduled sweep every ten minutes, published in full, exception included.
Reading the table honestly
"Not published" is not a criticism. It means that company does not state a figure on its own site, so we will not print one. TinyWow publishes no file size, no batch size and no daily cap anywhere. PDF24 says "no limits", which is a claim rather than a number, though its uploader is configured to accept 1000 MB.
Several limits are per tool, not per plan. iLovePDF's free ceiling is 15 MB on Office conversions and OCR but 400 MB on redaction. Sejda runs from 5 MB to 100 MB. A single number in those columns would be wrong however it was chosen, so the range is there instead.
Prices assume a year up front. The monthly figure most of these advertise is the annual plan divided by twelve. Paying month to month costs more, and both numbers are in the cell. iLovePDF and Sejda price by the visitor's country, so those two were read from a UK connection.
Found something out of date? Tell us on the contact page and it gets corrected with the date changed. That is the whole value of a page like this.
The tools this is about
Checked 11 September 2026. Every competitor figure links to the page it came from.