A free Smallpdf alternative that never receives your file

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

Smallpdf publishes how long it keeps your file. Plume has no such number to publish, because there is no copy on a server to delete.

These are exact sentences from Smallpdf's own Privacy Notice, which the page itself dates 29 July 2025. We checked it on 27 July 2026.

None of that is an accusation. TLS in transit, ISO/IEC 27001 certification and a named, reputable EU host are real security work, and more than a lot of free converters bother with. It is simply a description of a different design. The file leaves your device, so something has to look after it while it is away.

Smallpdf publishes two different retention rules, and which one covers your file depends on whether you had an account and were logged in.

If you are signed in

If you are not signed in

So if you use Smallpdf without signing in, the published commitment is not one hour. It is "a reasonable period of time", with the clock restarting each time the file is reopened. Both rules are in section 6, and the second one is easy to miss because the one-hour figure reads like the general case. Read it yourself rather than taking our summary of it.

Smallpdf's support pages set out what you get without paying. The quote is theirs, in full:

One thing we will not do is tidy up a contradiction on their behalf: the support page says free access covers "basic features of 21 online tools", while the pricing page advertises "30+ document management tools". Both numbers are theirs, from different pages, on the same day.

Plume has no daily cap on its PDF tools, because there is no server metering them. It is not limitless either, and pretending otherwise would be the same trick in reverse: the real ceiling is your device's memory, so a very large file on an old phone will struggle where a laptop will not.

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, 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.

This page is not trying to win an argument. If you need any of the following, Smallpdf is genuinely the right tool and Plume is not:

1. Smallpdf wins

   Anything AI powered

   Chat with PDF, summarising, translation, question generation. Plume has none of it. Running models like that on your own device is a different engineering problem, not a feature we have quietly skipped.

2. Smallpdf wins

   Office format conversions

   Word to PDF, Excel to PDF, PowerPoint to PDF, and PDF to PowerPoint. Plume converts PDFs out to Word, Excel, CSV, text and Markdown, but it cannot yet take Office files in.

3. Smallpdf wins

   Cloud storage across devices

   Smallpdf offers cloud file storage, which is useful when you want a document available on your laptop and your phone. Plume has no accounts at all. That is deliberate, but it does mean nothing syncs and nothing is waiting for you on another machine.

4. Smallpdf wins

   Teams, billing and support contracts

   Smallpdf sells a Teams tier with user management, plus mobile and desktop apps. Plume is free, has no plans, and is built by one person.

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

That is the only test that matters. Pick the file you hesitated over, and watch it never leave.

Open the tools

Every quote on this page is verbatim from Smallpdf's own pages, checked on 27 July 2026. If Smallpdf changes a policy in a way that changes this page, we will correct it.

• Smallpdf Privacy Notice (the page states: last updated 29 July 2025)
• Smallpdf support, on what free and non-registered accounts include
• Smallpdf pricing, for the plan comparison grid
• Smallpdf homepage, for the security and certification claims