Everything you’ve been wondering about.

No. VellumPDF runs entirely in your browser: your PDFs are read, transformed, and saved on your own device, without ever passing through a server. You can check this yourself by opening the “Network” tab in your browser’s developer tools while using a tool — no request containing your file ever goes out.

Yes — all the tools in the suite are free, with no file limits and no account required, and they’ll stay that way. That’s possible because processing happens on your device: we don’t have a computing server to fund for every conversion. What we charge for is reserved for organizations bound by professional confidentiality, who need a written processing record and an installation on their own network — not an unlocked feature.

There’s no cap set arbitrarily by VellumPDF. The only real limit is the memory available on your device: a recent computer handles PDFs of several hundred megabytes without trouble, while a more modest device or a very large file may slow things down.

Partly. A tool that is already open keeps working if the connection drops, since all processing happens locally. Opening a new tool or reloading the page does require network access. For genuine offline use, the VellumPDF Cabinet licence provides a version you can install on your internal network.

VellumPDF works on up-to-date modern browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge, on both desktop and mobile. Older versions or very niche browsers may be missing some of the technical features we rely on.

Yes, with the Office to PDF tool, which also takes Excel and PowerPoint files (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx). The layout is rebuilt in your browser from what the file actually contains: a letter, a report, an invoice or a spreadsheet come out very close to the original, and the text stays real text. A complex layout — columns, floating text boxes — may drift from the original, so check the result before sending it.

Yes. The Unlock tool removes the password and restrictions from a PDF you legitimately have access to (you’ll be asked for the opening password if one exists), and the Protect tool does the opposite: it encrypts your document with AES-256. Like everything else, these operations happen entirely on your device.

Yes — and that’s the key difference from a black rectangle drawn on top, which can be removed or whose hidden text can still be copied. VellumPDF rasterizes the pages and strips the masked content out of the resulting file: after redaction, the text no longer exists in the document, which you can verify by trying to search or copy-paste it. The trade-off is that the exported document becomes an image, and its text is no longer selectable.

No. The text-recognition engine also runs in your browser, and its files are hosted on our own domain — no third-party service is ever called. Only the engine itself is downloaded, just once; your document, meanwhile, never leaves your device. That’s exactly what most online PDF suites can’t promise.

VellumPDF is designed and built by an independent publisher based in the canton of Geneva, with no funding round and no investors to satisfy. That independence is what lets us keep the essentials free and turn down every tracker and every ad.