About PDFFlow
I built this because I was tired of the same frustrations
PDFFlow is a free PDF tool site I built and run solo from Hyderabad. Everything on it — all 22 tools — runs in your browser and never sends your files anywhere.
Why this exists
I was doing freelance development work and constantly needing to do small things with PDFs — merge a proposal with attachments, compress a file for email, add my signature to a contract. Adobe Acrobat Pro is $239 a year and I wasn't going to pay that for tools I needed occasionally. The free alternatives either wanted me to upload confidential client files to their servers, or they had daily usage limits that ran out in the middle of a workday, or they added their own branding to my output.
The thing is, none of these operations are computationally heavy. Modern browsers can do all of it. The pdf-lib JavaScript library handles PDF manipulation well. There was no good reason these tools needed to upload anything to a server — they were doing it to build user data, not because the processing required it.
So I built PDFFlow in late 2023. The first version was basic — three tools, plain HTML, nothing fancy. I shared it in a couple of communities to see if anyone else had the same frustrations. They did. The response was enough to convince me to keep building.
How it works technically
When you upload a PDF to PDFFlow, it gets read into your browser's memory using the JavaScript File API. The processing — whatever operation you've chosen — runs using pdf-lib (for PDF manipulation) or pdf.js (for rendering and conversion), both running as JavaScript in your browser tab. The output gets saved directly to your device through the browser's download mechanism.
No file data travels over the network. You can verify this yourself: open Chrome DevTools (F12), go to the Network tab, and watch what happens when you process a file. The only network activity is the initial page load. During actual processing: nothing.
The site is built with Next.js and deployed as a static export on Netlify. All the PDF processing code runs client-side.
What it costs you
Nothing. All 22 tools are free with no account, no daily limits, and no watermarks on output. The site runs display ads to cover hosting and my time. That's the whole business model — I'd rather show you an ad than charge you, upload your files, or add a watermark to your documents.
Who runs it
Just me — Gaja Raju, a developer based in Hyderabad. I build, maintain, and write about PDFFlow. There's no team. When you email support@pdfflow.live, I'm the one reading it.
If something is broken, wrong, or could be better — tell me. I read everything and fix things that make sense.
What I'm working on
The current focus is making the existing 22 tools more reliable across edge cases — unusual PDF structures, very large files, scanned documents with complex layouts. I'd rather the tools that exist work really well than add more tools that work inconsistently.
If there's a tool you need that isn't here, tell me about it. I can't promise I'll build everything, but I do read all the suggestions and build the ones that seem genuinely useful to enough people.