A free alternative to Smallpdf
The same everyday jobs, without your file leaving the machine.
What is different here
Your file never reaches us. There is no upload, no queue and no copy of your document on our side.
No upload also means no retention question. There is no “files are deleted after an hour” promise here, because there is nothing on our side to delete.
The free tier is a daily allowance — two runs a day without an account and three a day in total once you sign in — and a paid plan removes the cap. There is no separate limit on file size.
And no watermark on anything, at any point.
Where a hosted service is still the right choice
If your team needs shared storage, a document history everyone can see, or an integration that pulls files out of Dropbox or Google Drive automatically, a hosted service does that and we do not.
Those features need a server by definition — something has to hold the file and be reachable by everyone. That is exactly the thing we removed, and removing it has a cost as well as a benefit.
If your work is collaborative in that way, pick the tool built for it.
What you can do right now
Every common job: merge, split, compress, convert, sign, fill, protect, unlock, rotate, crop, watermark, number pages, OCR a scan, compare two documents.
134 tools, and they keep working offline once you have run them once.
Measured on this site
Real runs of our own tools, three times each, on September 28, 2026 (Chrome 153 · Apple M4 Pro). Times vary with the computer or phone you use; the last column is the one that matters for privacy.
| Job and file | Time | Result | Largest upload |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compress6-page scanned PDF · 10.5 MB | 1.1 s | 2.1 MB | 0 bytes |
| Mergethree 10-page PDFs · 28 KB | 0.3 s | 26 KB | 0 bytes |
| PDF to JPG10-page text PDF · 10 KB | 0.3 s | 1.9 MB | 0 bytes |
“Largest upload” is the biggest request the page sent while the job ran; if the file were uploaded, it would show megabytes. You can take the same measurement on any site with the first check below.
How to check any of this yourself
Do not take our word for it, and do not take theirs. These four checks take a minute each and work on any online PDF tool, including this one.
- Open the network tab in developer tools, then run the tool. If your file is being uploaded, you will see it leave. Here, for every tool that takes a file, you will see the page load its own code and nothing carrying your file.
- Turn off your network and run the tool again. If it still works, the processing was never happening on a server.
- Read the privacy page and look for how long files are kept. A service that stores your file will say so, usually with a number of hours.
- Try a file larger than the free limit. Where a limit exists, it usually exists because every file costs the service money.
Common questions
- Is DocuGrip free?
- Yes, with a daily allowance: two runs a day for visitors and three a day in total once you sign in. A paid plan removes the cap. Nothing you make carries a watermark.
- Is there a file size limit?
- There is no separate file size limit on any plan. Very large files depend on the memory of the computer or phone you use.
- Is my file uploaded?
- Not for the everyday tools — merge, split, compress, convert, sign, fill, protect and the rest work without sending your file anywhere; the table above measures it. Tools that use AI send the document to process it and say so on their page.
- Does it work offline?
- Yes. Once you have run a tool, it keeps working without a connection.
Product names belong to their owners and are used here for comparison only. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to them in any way.