I got sick of PDFsam Pro ads and built a free PDF merger that runs entirely in your browser
PDFsam Pro is the third desktop PDF tool I’ve uninstalled this year. Every one of them ships with an updater that nags, a free tier that watermarks my output, and a “Pro” upgrade banner the size of a parking ticket.
So I built the opposite: one HTML file, pdf-lib loaded in the browser, no upload, no signup, no cookies, no telemetry. Merge, split, and optimize all run on your machine — your PDFs never touch a server.
The three things I hear most from people who demo’d it: “wait, this is free?”, “does it work on mobile?”, and “why does every other PDF site want my email address?” The answer to all three is the same — there’s no server, no account system, no email capture. Once the page loads, it works offline. Your browser is the runtime.
I use it almost every day: merging multipage scans into a single document, pulling specific pages out of a large PDF without re-uploading anything, compressing a presentation before emailing it. Nothing revolutionary — just the thing I wanted to exist.
Try it: 217.142.241.107:3010
Comparison vs the usual suspects:
| PDF Tool | PDFsam Pro | Smallpdf | iLovePDF | Adobe
Runs in your browser | Yes | No (Java) | No | No | Desktop
No signup or account | Yes | No | partial | partial | No
Free for the basics | Yes | partial | 1-task | 1-task | Sub
No ads / no upsell | Yes | No | No | No | No
Works offline | Yes | No | No | No | Yes
Stack: single HTML file + pdf-lib. No build step, no npm. Works offline once loaded.
Feedback wanted — what’s the first PDF task that makes you reach for a paid tool? I’d rather build the thing that’s actually annoying you than guess.