Frequently asked questions
Everything you need to know about using Dr.PDF - from privacy to file limits.
General
Is Dr.PDF really free?
Yes. Every tool on Dr.PDF is free with no usage limits, no watermarks, and no premium tier. We believe essential PDF utilities should be accessible to everyone.
Do I need to create an account?
No account is required. Open the site, pick a tool, drop your files, and download results. There is no sign-up flow because we never store your documents.
Can I use Dr.PDF offline?
After the initial page load, many tools work without an active connection because processing is local. Full offline use requires a future PWA release; today you need internet to load the app once.
Security
Are my files uploaded to a server?
Most tools never upload your files - processing runs in your browser. Office conversions (Word, Excel, PowerPoint ↔ PDF) use LibreOffice on the server when available; files are processed and discarded immediately, never stored. Translate sends text snippets to an external API (with consent), and OCR downloads language models from a CDN.
How is Dr.PDF different from other online PDF tools?
Most online PDF tools upload every file to cloud servers. Dr.PDF keeps PDF processing in your browser. Office conversions may use brief, temporary server processing for quality - files are not stored. Translate sends text snippets with your consent.
Can I use Dr.PDF for sensitive documents?
Dr.PDF is designed for privacy-sensitive workflows: contracts, medical records, financial statements, and internal documents. Because your files are processed on your own device, you control where your data goes. For confidential material, avoid the Translate tool - it is the one feature that sends extracted text to an external service.
Tools
Which tools does Dr.PDF include?
Dr.PDF includes 34 tools across organize, optimize, convert, edit, security, and intelligence categories - merge, split, compress, OCR, HEIC to JPG, Word/Excel/PPT conversion, sign, watermark, protect, unlock, compare, redact, summarize, translate, and more.
How do I open HEIC photos from my iPhone on Windows?
Use Dr.PDF's HEIC to JPG tool to convert iPhone photos to JPEG or PNG in your browser. Files are processed locally - nothing is uploaded. You can also use JPG to PDF to turn HEIC images into a PDF directly.
Does PDF to Word preserve formatting?
PDF to Word extracts text content into an editable DOCX file. Complex layouts, tables, and scanned documents may require OCR first. For pixel-perfect layout, PDF to JPG or PDF to PowerPoint may be better options.
Can I process multiple files at once?
Yes. Tools like Merge PDF, JPG to PDF, and Scan to PDF accept multiple files. Split PDF and PDF to JPG can output multiple files, downloadable individually or as a ZIP archive.
Technical
What browsers are supported?
Dr.PDF works on Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, and other modern browsers with WebAssembly support. For camera scanning and large files, we recommend the latest version of Chrome or Edge.
Is there a file size limit?
Each file can be up to 100MB, with a 250MB total across all files in one job. These caps exist because everything is processed in your browser's memory - going beyond them tends to crash the tab rather than finish. Very large files may also take longer on lower-end devices.
What libraries power Dr.PDF?
Dr.PDF uses pdf-lib and PDF.js for core PDF operations, Tesseract.js for OCR, docx/mammoth/xlsx for Office conversions, and @pdfsmaller/pdf-encrypt-lite for password protection - all running in the browser.