Ten PDF tools that never send your file anywhere
PDF Workbench is a single web page that reads, edits and rebuilds PDF files inside your own browser. The PDF engine (pdf-lib) is shipped with the page, so opening a document, editing it and saving the result all happen on your device. There is no upload step, no account, no sign-in and no payment. The app makes no network requests of any kind while you work, and it stores nothing: no cookies, no local storage, no server-side copy. Closing the tab discards everything.
What each tool does
View PDF
Read and navigate first. Open one PDF in a large, private reading view, using your browser's own PDF viewer for zoom, search and printing. Choose an edit tool only when you need one.
Merge PDFs
Combine documents in order. Add two or more PDF files and reorder them with the arrow buttons in the file list; the final document follows the order shown there.
Split PDF
Pages or equal-size chunks. Turn one document into individual pages, into fixed-size groups of pages, or into a set of single pages you pick in the page navigator. Outputs are bundled into one uncompressed ZIP file for dependable browser-only processing.
Organize pages
Reorder, extract or remove. Drag page previews to rearrange them, or use the arrow buttons. A custom order accepts commas and ranges; omit a page to remove it or repeat one to duplicate it. This is also the tool for pulling out a contiguous excerpt as a single PDF.
Rotate pages
Turn selected pages. Rotate every page or a specific range by 90, 180 or 270 degrees, without re-encoding page content. Click page previews in the page navigator or type a page range; at least one page stays selected.
Watermark
Add diagonal text. Place centered, translucent text across all pages or a chosen range, with your own size, color, opacity and angle. Built-in PDF fonts support Latin text; long watermark text is reduced to fit.
Comments
Add or edit sticky notes. Add a standard sticky-note comment, or select an existing standard comment to edit it. Click a page preview to choose its page. Highlights, drawings, replies and other annotation types are preserved unchanged.
Page numbers
Number every page neatly, or only a range. Choose a corner or centered position, a starting number and an optional prefix. Selected pages are numbered in document order, starting with the number you set.
Images to PDF
Combine JPG and PNG files into one ordered, print-friendly PDF. Pick A4, US Letter or a page that matches each image, plus the margin you want.
Clean metadata
Inspect or replace properties. See the title, author, subject, keywords, creator, producer and dates a PDF carries, clear them all, or write deliberate replacements.
Limits worth knowing before you start
- File size. Each file must be under 100 MB, and the files you have open must total under 250 MB. Everything is held in browser memory, so very large documents depend on how much memory the tab has.
- Encrypted PDFs are not supported. A password-protected or otherwise encrypted file cannot be read; unlock it in another application first.
- Latin text only for watermarks and page numbers. Both use the built-in PDF Helvetica fonts with WinAnsi encoding. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic and similar text will fail rather than render, because no font is embedded.
- No preview of an edit. The page navigator shows the pages of every PDF you have open and the order you have arranged, not a rendering of the finished output. You see the actual result when you open the downloaded PDF.
- Tools work on one document at a time. Several PDFs can be open together and all of them appear in the page navigator, but exactly one is marked Using, and that is the document a tool reads and writes. Merge is the only exception: it always uses every open PDF, in the order shown.
- The split ZIP cannot be re-imported. Split produces a ZIP archive; unzip it and open an individual PDF if you want to keep editing.
- The reading view needs a service worker. Local PDF bytes are handed to the browser's own viewer through a service worker on this origin. In a browser or private mode that blocks service workers the edit tools still work, but the reading view does not.
Frequently asked questions
Does my PDF get uploaded anywhere?
No. The app contains no network calls at all: no fetch, no XMLHttpRequest, no WebSocket, no analytics beacon, and no reference to any external host. Your file is read with the browser's File API, rebuilt by the PDF library bundled with the page, and handed back to you as a local download. Nothing is written to cookies, local storage or IndexedDB either, so no copy of the document survives closing the tab.
Is it free?
Yes, completely. There is no account, no sign-in, no trial and no paid tier, and nothing is metered, because no processing happens on a server. The only ceilings are the file-size limits above and your browser's memory.
How do I extract a page range as one PDF?
Use Organize pages, set Page order to Custom order, and type the range, for example 4-7. That produces a single PDF containing pages 4 to 7 in order. Split PDF does something different: with Selected pages it writes one PDF per selected page and bundles them into a ZIP, so it will never give you one continuous excerpt. Nothing in the tool bar makes that distinction obvious, and it is the most common misunderstanding about this app.
How do I delete pages?
Also in Organize pages. Either press the remove button on the page cards you do not want, or set Custom order and list only the pages to keep, for example 1-3, 6. There is no separate Remove tool, and at least one page must remain in the document.
Can I have several PDFs open at once?
Yes. Open them one after another and the page navigator lists every one of them, each under its own heading with its file name and page count, so you can see all their pages side by side without closing anything. Tools stay single-document: exactly one open PDF is marked Using, and that is the one every tool reads and writes. Press Use on another document's heading, or click one of its page previews, to switch which one that is. Merge is the exception, because it always consumes every open PDF in the order shown.
Can I chain two edits?
Only if you ask for it. By default every tool re-reads the original file you opened, so rotating and then numbering means downloading the rotated PDF and dropping it back in. Tick "Keep working on the result" next to the action button before you run a tool, and the PDF you just downloaded also becomes the open document, so the next tool edits that new version. The option applies to tools whose output is a single PDF; it does not apply to Split, whose output is a ZIP, or to Images to PDF.