A PDF24 alternative that does the work in your browser

Every PDF24 figure in this table is quoted and sourced further down the page. Checked 27 July 2026.

PDF24 asks you to trust a short, well documented hour on a server in Germany. Plume asks you to trust nothing, because there is no hour and no server.

These are exact sentences from PDF24's own FAQ, fetched on 27 July 2026. They are unusually direct, which makes quoting them easy and arguing with them unnecessary.

That is a better disclosure than most of this industry manages: a named operator, a named jurisdiction, a hard one-hour window, and an explicit statement that they do not store or analyse what you send. The second quote matters just as much. PDF24 already agrees that local processing is the stronger position, which is why they built the Creator. Their online tools and Plume simply answer the same question in opposite directions.

PDF24 publishes the same window in two places and adds something most services do not: a way to remove the file yourself, immediately, without waiting for the timer.

The window

What it means for a company

The second quote is the most useful sentence on this page, and it is theirs. PDF24 states the legal consequence of server-side processing themselves: if your company puts client documents through the online tools, PDF24 becomes your processor and you need an agreement covering it. If the processing is local, no agreement is necessary, because nobody was commissioned to process anything. Plume's PDF tools sit on the second side of that line for the same reason the Creator does: the file never reaches us. If you have ever had to explain a free web tool to a compliance officer, that is the difference in practical terms.

This is the section where a comparison page is supposed to find a catch. There is not one. PDF24's own words:

No account, no daily quota, no per-file megabyte tier, and the same terms for companies as for individuals. Their homepage says "100% free of charge" and "No limits" and, as far as we can tell, means it. The funding model is stated openly rather than buried, which is more than can be said for a lot of free software.

Plume has no daily cap either, but it is not limit-free and saying so would be dishonest: because the work happens on your own hardware, the ceiling is your device's memory. A 400 MB scan will run on a laptop and struggle on an old phone. PDF24 does not have that problem, precisely because their servers do the lifting. That is a real advantage of their design, and it is the flip side of the one we are arguing for.

Plume's PDF tools are code that runs inside the page you are already looking at. Your browser opens the file, your own processor does the work, and the result is saved straight back to your disk. There is no upload step to secure, no retention window to publish, no processing agreement to sign, and no Plume server copy for us to retain, lose, or be compelled to hand over.

A privacy claim you cannot test is just marketing. Open any Plume tool, open your browser's developer tools, switch to the Network tab, and run a file through it. Nothing carrying your document goes out. Or skip the tools entirely: load the page, turn your Wi-Fi off, and keep working. Then try that on any tool that uploads.

We wrote up the full method here, including how to run the same test on any other site.

PDF24 has been doing this since 2006 and it shows. If you need any of the following, they are genuinely the right choice and Plume is not:

1. PDF24 wins

   Very large files on a weak device

   Because their servers do the work, a 500 MB scan behaves the same on a six-year-old phone as on a workstation. Plume runs on your hardware, so on that phone it may simply run out of memory. If your file is enormous and your device is not, use PDF24.

2. PDF24 wins

   A free, unlimited offline desktop app

   PDF24 Creator is free for everyone including companies, works entirely offline, and covers the whole tool set. Plume is a website you can install as an app, which is not the same thing as a native desktop program.

3. PDF24 wins

   Tools Plume does not have

   Webpage to PDF, PDF Overlay, Compare PDFs and Web optimize PDF have no Plume equivalent. Their PDF converter also accepts Office documents going in, which Plume still cannot do.

4. PDF24 wins

   A data processing agreement on request

   If your organisation needs a signed DPA for a documented tool, PDF24 will provide one. Plume has no DPA to offer because it never becomes a processor, which answers the question differently rather than better for every procurement process.

5. PDF24 wins

   Far more languages

   PDF24's interface is available in over thirty languages. Plume is in 9.

If you came here for one specific job, here is the Plume equivalent. Each of these runs in your browser.

These are the closest Plume equivalents, not a claim of feature-for-feature or output-quality parity. Converters especially: a server-side engine and a browser-side one will not always agree on a complicated layout.

See all 49 tools

PDF24 will delete it within the hour. Plume never has it to delete. Pick the file where that distinction matters to you.

Open the tools

Every quote on this page is verbatim from PDF24's own pages, checked on 27 July 2026. If PDF24 changes something that changes this page, we will correct it.

• PDF24 FAQ, on security, retention and the data processing agreement
• PDF24 FAQ, on the tools being free without restriction
• PDF24 Tools homepage, for the free and no-limits claims
• PDF24 Creator, their offline desktop application