PDFsam Pro is the third desktop PDF tool I’ve uninstalled this year. Every one of them ships with an updater that nags, a free tier that watermarks my output, and a “Pro” upgrade banner the size of a parking ticket.
So I built the opposite: one HTML file, pdf-lib loaded in the browser, no upload, no signup, no cookies, no telemetry. Merge, split, and optimize all run on your machine — your PDFs never touch a server.
The three things I hear most from people who demo’d it: “wait, this is free?”, “does it work on mobile?”, and “why does every other PDF site want my email address?” The answer to all three is the same — there’s no server, no account system, no email capture. Once the page loads, it works offline. Your browser is the runtime.
I use it almost every day: merging multipage scans into a single document, pulling specific pages out of a large PDF without re-uploading anything, compressing a presentation before emailing it. Nothing revolutionary — just the thing I wanted to exist.
Try it: http://217.142.241.107:3010/<sub>
Comparison vs the usual suspects:
| PDF Tool | PDFsam Pro | Smallpdf | iLovePDF | Adobe
Runs in your browser | Yes | No (Java) | No | No | Desktop No signup or account | Yes | No | partial | partial | No Free for the basics | Yes | partial | 1-task | 1-task | Sub No ads / no upsell | Yes | No | No | No | No Works offline | Yes | No | No | No | Yes
Stack: single HTML file + pdf-lib. No build step, no npm. Works offline once loaded.
Feedback wanted — what’s the first PDF task that makes you reach for a paid tool? I’d rather build the thing that’s actually annoying you than guess.
Anyone feel super weird about the ip and port haha
Edit: and that the account is 16 minutes old
IP is fine, they just didn’t buy a domain to point to it.
I’d maybe feel better if there was some sort of repo to show the code.
I personally despise everything moving to browser based, and I intentionally steer everyone in my org to Outlook Classic as well as physical apps where it makes sense. This is all going the way of, “You will own nothing and be happy”.
Like people who don’t want to give up on hard cover books (my wife), there’s something about having the physical copy that feels good. Even though software isn’t physical, I’m more so talking locally installed and perpetually licensed or, better yet, FOSS.
that was literally going to be my first suggestion before I looked closer and looked their other posts.
It’s wild to see an IP and port with no domain in 2026. Which also screams “An I made this for me” because they may not have any idea regarding the security implications.