Proof: your files never leave your device

What we claim, exactly

When you use a PDFMagpie tool, your browser downloads our code and runs it on your own computer or phone. The PDF you choose is read into that browser tab’s memory, processed there, and the result is handed to your downloads. Your files, their names, the passwords you type and the text OCR finds are never sent to our servers or anyone else’s.

That claim is checkable because a browser has to make a network request to send anything anywhere, and browsers let you watch every request a page makes. If we were uploading your file, it would show up as an outgoing request roughly the size of the file. The two tests below look for exactly that, and they work on any PDF website, so you can also use them to compare services before trusting one with a payslip, a passport scan or a signed contract.

What PDFMagpie does download is our own code: the page, its fonts and scripts, and some heavier parts that load only when a tool needs them, such as the PDF page renderer, the encryption library used by Protect PDF and Unlock PDF, and the language data used by OCR PDF. Those requests go to your device, not from it. How the tools are built is explained in How PDFMagpie works; this page is only about checking it.

Before you start: use a test file, not your real document

Run the tests on a harmless file first. You can use any PDF you don’t mind sharing, but a file of a known, distinctive size makes an upload easy to spot. We made one for this purpose:

Download the 2 MB test PDF

• Size: 2,003,696 bytes, shown as about 2.0 MB in most browsers.
• Contents: three short pages explaining what it is, plus 2 MB of random padding stored as an attached file, so the PDF can’t be shrunk much and any upload of it stands out.
• Licence: CC0. Copy it, share it, use it to test other websites.

It works with every PDF tool on the site. Two behave slightly differently: OCR PDF will say the pages already contain text (true, so tick Force OCR on all pages to run it anyway), and JPG to PDF takes images, so test it with any photo you don’t mind sharing.

Test 1: watch the Network tab (computer, about two minutes)

Every desktop browser has developer tools with a Network panel that lists each request a page makes, with its method (GET to download, POST or PUT usually to send), its size and its destination. Menu names shift a little between browser versions, so if a label differs slightly, look for the nearest equivalent.

Chrome or Edge (Windows, Mac, Linux, Chromebook)

1. Open the tool you want to check, for example Merge PDF.
2. Press F12 (on a Mac, Cmd + Option + I; on a Chromebook, Ctrl + Shift + I), or right-click the page and choose Inspect. Open the Network tab.
3. Tick Preserve log, then press the clear button (a circle with a line through it) so the list starts empty.
4. Choose the test PDF in the tool and run it: merge it, compress it, protect it, whatever the tool does. Wait until the download appears.
5. Click the Size column header to sort by size, then look at the largest entries. Add the Method column if it isn’t shown (right-click any column header).
6. Click any request you’re unsure about. A request that sends data has a Payload tab showing what was sent; downloads don’t.

Firefox

1. Press F12 (Mac: Cmd + Option + I) and choose the Network tab.
2. Tick Persist Logs in the settings cog, clear the list with the bin icon, then run the tool on the test file.
3. Sort by Transferred or Size. Requests that sent data show a Request tab with the body when you click them.

Safari (Mac)

1. Turn on the developer features first: Safari → Settings → Advanced, then tick the option to show features for web developers (older versions call it Show Develop menu in menu bar).
2. Choose Develop → Show Web Inspector (Cmd + Option + I) and open the Network tab. Enable Preserve Log.
3. Run the tool on the test file and sort by size.

How to read the result

You are looking for a request that goes out and is about as big as your file. With the 2 MB test file, an upload would be a POST or PUT request of roughly 2 MB, or a series of smaller ones adding up to that. On PDFMagpie you won’t find one. You will see some GET requests while a tool works, because parts of our code load on demand; the next sections explain exactly which.

Test 2: switch the internet off (any device, including phones)

If a tool keeps working with no network connection, it can’t be sending your file anywhere. This test needs no developer tools, so it’s the one to use on an iPhone, an Android phone or a tablet.

1. Open the tool and run it once on the test file (or any harmless PDF). This makes your browser download and cache every part of the tool’s code, including the parts that only load when a job starts.
2. Keep the tab open. Turn on airplane mode, or switch off Wi-Fi and mobile data. On a computer you can also unplug the network cable, or in Chrome’s Network panel choose Offline from the throttling menu.
3. Press Start over in the tool (don’t reload the page), choose a file and run the tool again.
4. The tool should finish and give you the download as normal. Then turn the network back on.

We ran this test ourselves on 21 October 2026 against a local copy of the production site with production caching, in Chromium, on Merge PDF and Compress PDF: in both, the second run completed with the network switched off. Two things will fail offline, and both are expected: reloading the page (the page itself has to come from the internet), and a tool’s first run if its code hasn’t loaded yet. For OCR PDF, run it once online with the same language selected so that language’s data is cached first.

What you should see on PDFMagpie

We recorded every request made from the moment a file was chosen until the result was ready, on a local production build with all third-party hosts blocked. Your list may differ slightly (file names include a code that changes when we update the site, and your browser may already have some files cached), but the pattern is the same.

Every one of those requests was a download from our own site, under /_astro/. None had a request body, which is what an upload needs. OCR adds one more kind of download: the language data for each language you pick, from /tessdata/ on pdfmagpie.com (between about 0.6 MB and 3 MB per language, cached afterwards). That file is the same for everyone and contains nothing about your document.

The table below lists every tool, so you can pick one and try it:

• Merge PDF: combine pdfs in any order
• Split PDF: break a pdf into several files
• Organize pages: reorder, delete and rotate pages
• Rotate PDF: fix sideways pages for good
• Extract pages: keep only the pages you need
• Crop PDF: trim margins on every page
• Repair PDF: rebuild a file that won’t open
• Compress PDF: make files small enough to send
• PDF to JPG: turn pages into sharp images
• Extract images: save the pictures inside a pdf
• JPG to PDF: combine photos into one pdf
• PDF to text: copy or save the words as .txt
• Sign PDF: draw, type or upload a signature
• Edit & fill: fill forms and add text or shapes
• Page numbers: number pages your way
• Watermark: stamp draft or your logo
• Annotate PDF: highlight, note, draw and comment
• Flatten PDF: bake forms and notes into the page
• Create a form: add text boxes, checkboxes and dropdowns
• Compare PDFs: see what changed between two versions
• Protect PDF: aes-256 password and permissions
• Unlock PDF: remove a password you know
• Redact PDF: permanently remove text and images
• Remove metadata: strip author, scripts and hidden data
• Edit properties: set title, author, subject and keywords
• OCR PDF: make scans searchable

What about the adverts and analytics?

PDFMagpie is free because its pages carry Google AdSense code. In the Network panel on the live site you will therefore see requests to Google addresses (such as googlesyndication.com and doubleclick.net) as the page loads, and sometimes later. Here is how to tell them apart from an upload:

• They start when the page loads, whether or not you choose a file, and they continue the same way if you never use the tool.
• They are small: page views, ad requests and images, not a request the size of your file. Sort by size and you’ll see none of them approaches 2 MB going out.
• We never pass your file, its name or anything about it to the ad code, and our tools do their heavy work in background workers of their own. Ads are placed below the tools, never inside them. The Network test is how you check that nothing was sent, whoever’s code is on the page.
• You can remove them from the test altogether: switch on an ad blocker, or use the offline test above. The tools work exactly the same.

Our privacy policy sets out what those services receive and the choices you have.

What these tests can and can’t prove

We would rather you understood the limits than over-trusted a test.

• A test covers the session you ran. It shows what the site did on that day, in that browser. Websites change, ours included, so if it matters, repeat it, especially after the site looks different.
• Upload can be split into pieces. A site could send a file in small chunks. That’s why the offline test is useful: no connection, no chunks.
• Your device is part of the picture. Browser extensions with permission to read pages can see what any website shows you. Downloads land in your normal downloads folder, and synced folders (OneDrive, iCloud Drive, Google Drive) may copy them to the cloud by design. Those are your settings, not ours, but they’re worth knowing.
• We don’t use a service worker or any background sync, so nothing can be sent after you close the tab. Close the tab and the in-memory copies of your file are gone.

Frequently asked questions