PDF tools without uploading: how Foolscap compares
Most popular PDF sites, iLovePDF, Smallpdf and Adobe’s online tools among them, upload your file to their servers, do the work there and send the result back. Foolscap does the same everyday jobs inside your browser, so the file never leaves your device. Both have their place, and this page sets out the differences fairly.
MergeFree. Nothing is uploaded.
How to do it
- Note the job you usually do on an upload site, such as merging, compressing or unlocking.
- Open the same tool here, from the home page or by typing its name in the finder.
- Add your files: your browser reads them, and nothing is sent anywhere.
- Run the tool and save the result, as you would on any PDF site.
- To check, try it once with the internet switched off after the page has loaded.
How upload-based sites work
On an upload-based site, your file travels to the company’s servers, is processed there, and the result is sent back for you to download. That is how iLovePDF, Smallpdf and Adobe’s online Acrobat tools work for their web tools. They are established companies that publish privacy policies, protect files in transit and say how long they keep them before deleting them; read those policies for the details, which change from time to time.
The point is not that they misuse files. It is that a copy of your document leaves your device, and you rely on their word for what happens to it next. For many documents that is fine. For some, it is exactly what you, or your employer, would rather avoid.
How Foolscap works
Here every tool runs inside your browser, using your own device’s processor and memory. Once a tool page has loaded, it works with no connection at all, which you can check by switching the internet off. Every tool page also carries a security policy telling the browser it may connect only to this site, and this site is a folder of pages and scripts with no server program to receive a file. There is nothing to delete afterwards, because nothing was ever received.
What is free, and why
Upload-based sites pay for the servers that do the work, so they typically limit free use, whether by file size, by the number of tasks, or by which tools are free, and offer paid plans for more. The limits change, so check each site’s own pricing page rather than any figure you read elsewhere.
Here the work is done by your device, so each file costs nothing to process: every tool is free, with no sign-up, no watermark and no limits beyond what your device can handle. The site is paid for by adverts on its home page and guides, never on a tool page, and by people who choose to buy us a coffee.
Where an upload site may suit you better
Working on your device has costs too. Reading a long scan with Make searchable is slower on a cheap phone than on a powerful server. Sending a document to several people to sign, with reminders and a record of who signed when, needs a service in the middle, which is what products such as Adobe Acrobat Sign exist for. Word to PDF here uses the PDF’s built-in fonts, so a document in a special font looks plainer than with a word processor that has the font. And a digital signature from a USB token needs the token’s own software.
If a document is already public, such as a published report or a brochure, uploading it costs you little privacy. If your organisation has approved and pays for a particular service, use that. The case for on-device tools is strongest for the documents that matter most: identity papers, bank statements, salary slips, medical reports, contracts, and anything at work you have been told not to upload.
The same jobs, done here
The everyday jobs are all here, more than forty of them: Merge, Compress to a size such as 100 KB, Split, unlock with Remove a password, Sign, PDF to Word and Excel, JPG to PDF, page numbers, watermarks, and Make searchable in English and twenty other languages, among them Malayalam, Hindi and Tamil. Each result hands straight to the next tool with Then, so merging, compressing and signing is one flow, with nothing saved in between.
A worked example
Ravi’s company forbids uploading client documents to outside websites, and he needs to join three signed contracts and bring them under a client portal’s 5 MB limit. He used to do this on an upload site. Now, on his office laptop, he opens Merge here, adds the three PDFs, puts them in order and presses Merge into one file, then taps Then, chooses Compress, picks To a size, then Other, and types 5000. The files never leave his laptop, so the job stays within his company’s rule, and he gets the same kind of file an upload site would have returned.
Questions people ask
Is Foolscap connected with iLovePDF, Smallpdf or Adobe?
No. Their names are used here only to describe their products, and they are trademarks of their owners.
Are upload-based PDF sites unsafe?
Not necessarily. The established ones publish privacy policies and say how long they keep files. The difference is that your file leaves your device and you rely on their word, while here it never leaves.
Is Foolscap really free, with no limits?
Yes. There is no server doing the work, so there is nothing to ration: no caps on file size or on the number of files or tasks, no sign-up, and no watermark.
Do I need to install anything?
No. It runs in the browser. You can install it from the browser’s menu to open it like an app, and it works offline once loaded.
How can I check that nothing is uploaded?
Switch the internet off once a tool page has loaded and run the tool. See is it safe to upload PDFs online for more ways to check.
Your file stays on your device. Foolscap does the work inside your browser, so nothing is uploaded and there is nothing for anyone to keep. How you can check