I am a solo dev working on a Free PDF Editor https://pdffreeeditor.com which is actually free and works well. Protecting you from another hidden Paywall.
Six months ago I needed to compress my tax return. Googled it, uploaded to the first site I found, then thought: "Wait, where did my file just go?"
That uncomfortable feeling led to PDFfreeEditor – a PDF tool where files never leave your browser.
The architecture:
Instead of upload → server process → download, everything happens client-side with WebAssembly. Your PDF stays in browser memory, gets processed locally, and you download the result.
Why this matters:
- Your sensitive docs (taxes, contracts, medical records) never hit a server
- Faster for most files (no upload latency)
- Scales infinitely (users provide the compute)
- Zero server costs (I serve 50K users for $0/month)
Technical details:
- PDF.js parses the PDF structure
- Custom WASM module handles compression (C compiled to WASM)
- Chunked processing for large files (prevents memory crashes)
- Service Worker makes it work offline
What surprised me:
40% of users specifically mentioned privacy in feedback. There's real demand for tools that don't upload your data.
What I'd do differently:
- Start with TypeScript (dealing with complex PDF structures in JS was painful)
- Add privacy-friendly telemetry earlier (I don't know which features are actually used)
- Open source from day 1 (doing it now, late)
The economics are interesting:
Traditional PDF service: $125-550/month in server costs
My costs: $0/month (Cloudflare Pages free tier)
Trade-off: Users with slow devices have slower processing. But they get perfect privacy in exchange.
I'm here all day to answer questions about:
- WebAssembly implementation
- Client-side architecture decisions
- Why I think "no backend" is underutilized
- PDF.js internals
- Scaling without infrastructure
Hi HN, I built pdffreeeditor.com, a free online PDF toolkit. It’s intentionally “boring”: do the job fast, don’t force accounts, and try not to feel sketchy.
I recently did a pretty big SEO + structure cleanup (canonical/meta/schema duplication + internal linking), and now I want feedback from real humans on the part that actually matters long-term: UI/UX clarity, trust, and which features are genuinely missing.
Main pages I’d love feedback on (pick one and be ruthless):
Compress PDF hub (cluster I’m trying to make a ‘star’): https://pdffreeeditor.com/compress-pdf/ Goal: fast compression with clear tradeoffs (quality vs size).
OCR PDF / extract text (hard category, needs trust): https://pdffreeeditor.com/ocr-pdf/ Goal: scanned PDFs → searchable/copyable text. (Accuracy depends on scan quality — trying to be honest about that.)
I noticed something that felt oddly normal on the web, but the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.
Most “free” online image tools (convert, resize, compress) work by uploading your image to a server, processing it there, and sending it back.
That means even basic tasks like converting WebP to PNG or resizing a photo for a YouTube thumbnail often involve uploading personal or work-related files to a third-party service.
Bulk workflows make it worse. Many tools restrict batch processing unless you pay, and zip downloads are often locked behind upgrades.
So I built a small browser-based alternative where images are processed locally in the browser rather than uploaded for processing.
It supports:
format conversion (PNG, JPG, WebP, AVIF, HEIC)
resizing by pixels or percentage
compression for web use
cropping
bulk uploads + zip downloads
no account required
It’s intentionally simple and focused on high-intent tasks.
If anyone here is curious, I’d love feedback on:
whether local processing is something you care about
Thanks for pointing this out — that’s fair criticism.
The CMP is coming from AdSense, but you’re right that this clashes with the “privacy-first” positioning, especially without a clear reject-all option. That’s on me to fix.
I totally get your concern and for people turning away seeing this being transparent is what I want to do if they are uncomfortable sharing their preferences and cookies, then I am more uncomfortable stealing it in secret and using that for ads without their knowledge (which most of websites do).
Haha i cant agree more, But a serious number of these posts are just baby projects without any solid outcome, as they don't usually offer promised results a.k.a editing pdf rather features like merge, split, reorder only not actual text editing and conversion features or OCR. A complete project needs more than a starting post ( mine 2 months prior which they tried to copy by motivation of AI only not bv their own mind, hence they are failing to provide said features and put coming soon on actual editing etc )