Decision guide
Which PDF tool do you need?
We have 42+ tools. Two of them probably compete for the job you have in mind. These decision matrices spell out the right pick for each common scenario — including the cases where we are honest that we do not (yet) have what you need.
Compression: which mode shrinks best?
All four scenarios start in the same place, but the right answer depends on what you are optimising for — size, network performance, an exact target, or privacy stripping.
| If you want to... | Use this tool |
|---|---|
| Just shrink a PDF without thinking about it | Compress PDF Light mode — fast, minimal visible quality loss. |
| Make a PDF load fast on slow connections | Optimize PDF Restructures object streams for web-friendly streaming. |
| Reduce a PDF to a specific size (e.g. under 1 MB) | Compress to target size Binary-search compression until the file fits the size target. |
| Compress and strip metadata, JavaScript, and embedded scripts | Compress + Repair Use Repair to rebuild the PDF, then run Compress (Heavy) — together they drop most metadata and embedded scripts. |
Conversion: PDF → what?
PDFs can flow out into editable docs, images, e-reader formats, or structured data. Picking the right destination format saves a round-trip through a wrong one.
| If you want to... | Use this tool |
|---|---|
| Convert a PDF into an editable Word document | PDF to DOCX Best when you need to edit prose, not preserve layout pixel-perfect. |
| Pull a spreadsheet (tabular data) out of a PDF | PDF to XLSX Detects tables on each page and emits real Excel rows. |
| Render every page as a high-quality image | PDF to PNG Use JPG if file size matters more than transparency. |
| Convert a PDF into EPUB for e-readers | PDF to EPUB Reflows text — best for prose-heavy documents, not for layout-rich PDFs. |
Security: which lock for which threat?
Different security goals need different tools. Password-locking and restricting actions are two separate operations — not synonyms.
| If you want to... | Use this tool |
|---|---|
| Stop anyone from opening the PDF without a password | Protect PDF (User Password) Use AES-256 encryption with a strong user password. |
| Allow viewing but block copying text or printing | Protect PDF (Permissions) Set an owner password and disable copy/print permissions. |
| Remove a password from a PDF you already know | Unlock PDF Requires the current password — not a cracker. |
| Black-out confidential text so it cannot be recovered | Coming soon — needs OCR + content-stream rewriteHonest answer Real redaction requires rasterizing and re-OCRing the affected pages; the v1 rectangle-overlay approach left the underlying text recoverable, so we pulled it. |
| Apply a cryptographically verifiable digital signature | Coming soon — needs a CA-issued certificateHonest answer Real PAdES B-T signing requires a certificate authority and an RFC 3161 timestamp authority; v1 shipped a visible stamp that we have since hidden because it set the wrong expectation. Track this on the roadmap. |
Page operations: rearrange, prune, prepend, rotate
These four operations are easy to confuse. Knowing which tool handles which gives you a five-second answer instead of trial-and-error.
| If you want to... | Use this tool |
|---|---|
| Reorder the pages of a PDF (e.g. move page 5 to the front) | Merge PDFs Open the merge tool with a single file — drag pages to reorder. |
| Remove specific pages (e.g. drop pages 3 and 7) | Split PDF Use ranges mode, keep what you want, discard the rest. |
| Add a cover page to the front of a document | Merge PDFs Upload the cover first, then the body PDF, then merge. |
| Rotate misaligned pages to be right-side-up | Rotate PDF Apply rotation to a specific page range, not just every page. |
Still not sure which tool you need?
Open the command palette and type what you want to do. It searches all 42 tools by name, alias, and description in real time.