Free PDF Editor Online: Edit, Sign & Redact PDFs Without Uploading Them

No. Your PDF is opened, edited and saved entirely inside your browser, and it never leaves your device. PDF.js renders the pages and pdf-lib rebuilds the file on save. The file is held in browser memory only, so closing the tab removes it, and nobody, including us, has a copy. Save your result before you close the tab.

Open your browser developer tools, go to the Network tab, then load, edit and save a PDF while watching the requests. A tool that truly works locally shows no request carrying your file. You can also switch the network to Offline after the PDF has opened and confirm the editor still works. The steps are listed in the section above.

Yes. ToolDeck PDF Editor has no sign-up wall, no daily task limit and adds no watermark of its own. The only limit is your device memory, because everything runs locally. The only watermark in a saved file is one you choose to add yourself.

Yes. Choose Edit text, tap a line of text, retype it and press Enter. To reposition a line, tap it, press Move, then drag. The editor covers the original text with a white box and draws your new text in Helvetica or Times, whichever is closer to the original. It does not reflow whole paragraphs, so each line is edited on its own, and the page must be upright (0 degrees rotation).

No. When you edit or move a line, the original text is hidden under a white box but still exists inside the file. If the original wording is sensitive, use the Redact tool instead, which removes it permanently.

Yes. Any page with a redaction box is rendered to an image with the black boxes burned into the pixels, then saved as a flattened page. The covered text no longer exists in the saved file, so it cannot be recovered. The trade-off is that text on those pages is no longer selectable or searchable. Pages without redactions are left untouched.

If privacy and convenience matter, yes. iLovePDF processes your file on its servers and says uploaded files are deleted automatically within about two hours, while ToolDeck never uploads your PDF. ToolDeck also puts text editing, signing, redaction, page tools, merging, splitting and watermarking in one editor. iLovePDF offers more tools overall and desktop and mobile apps, so pick whichever suits the job.

iLovePDF lists editing PDFs among its Premium features on its homepage, while several of its other tools are free. Plans and limits change, so check its pricing page. ToolDeck PDF Editor is free with no daily limit, no account and no watermark.

You can mark up a scan, but you cannot edit its words directly. A scan is a picture of a page, so there is no real text to tap. Run it through our OCR PDF tool first to create a text layer, then open the result here. Without OCR you can still add text, signatures, images, highlights and redaction boxes on top of a scanned page.

Yes. Use the Add text tool to type your details on top of any form, including flat PDF forms that have no fillable fields. Add your signature with the Sign tool and save the finished file.

Tap Sign, draw your signature in the pad and tap Use this signature, then tap the page where it should go. You can also upload a PNG or JPG of an existing signature. Drag the corner handle to resize it before you save.

Yes, in modern mobile browsers. Signing, adding text and quick text fixes work well on a phone, and the signature pad suits a touchscreen. Large PDFs render slowly on phones, so use a laptop for long documents. On touch screens, reorder pages with the up and down arrow buttons.

Not yet. If the PDF needs a password to open, the tool cannot read it, so remove the password first and edit the resulting file. A PDF that is protected only against editing, but not against opening, usually opens fine.

Text you add or edit is saved in a built-in PDF font: Helvetica for sans-serif and Times for serif. It renders cleanly in every viewer, but characters outside the Latin set (Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean) cannot be drawn and are replaced with a question mark, and the editor tells you when that happens. For those scripts, type the text in another app, take a screenshot and place it with the Image tool.

The practical limit is your device memory. On a modern laptop, PDFs around 100 MB open and save fine, while very large files or documents with hundreds of pages can be slow because every page is rendered for the preview. For big files, split the PDF first, edit each part, then merge them back.