No gates
PDF tools no daily limit
Task caps exist to upsell you to paid plans. 'You've hit your 2 free tasks for today' is designed to interrupt your workflow at the worst possible moment. The numbers — 2, 3, 5 per day — are tuned so that any real project trips them.
PennyPDF's 14 free client-side tools have no daily limit, no hourly limit, no task count limit. Merge 1000 PDFs in a row, rotate 500 pages, split 200 files — nothing throttles. The reason: these tools run in your browser, not on our servers, so there's nothing for us to rate-limit.
Server-side tools (compression, OCR, conversion) do have a free-tier cap to prevent abuse, but it's 3 operations per day unauthenticated or 10 per month signed in — and you can always buy coins to go beyond. No hourly throttle even on paid tiers.
How it works
- 1Bookmark /#tools — the tool catalog.
- 2Use any of the free 14 tools as often as you need. No throttle.
- 3For server-side tools (compress, OCR, convert), use the free daily quota or buy coins.
- 4Nothing ever pauses mid-workflow to show a paywall.
Frequently asked
Is there a hidden rate limit I might hit?+
We have anti-abuse IP-level rate limiting (60 requests per minute to the site) to prevent bots, but it's well above any human usage pattern. You'd have to script an attack to hit it.
Why do competitors limit free tiers?+
Smallpdf and iLovePDF run everything server-side, so every free operation costs them compute. Limits are about cost control + conversion. PennyPDF runs 14 tools client-side, so the marginal cost to us of a free user's 100th merge is zero.
Are the free tools quality-limited?+
No. The free merge produces the same output as any paid merge. The free rotate is identical to the paid rotate. Quality is determined by the library (pdf-lib), not by tier.
File size limits on unlimited tools?+
Yes — 25MB per file on mobile, 100MB on desktop (browser memory constraints). For larger files, use /compress first (paid) or the API (2GB).
Can I script the free tools via the API?+
API requires authentication and coin-based pricing — there's no unlimited API free tier. For volume automation at client-side rates, consider self-hosting our open-source pdf-core library (Phase 7 release).
Why PennyPDF
- No subscription. Ever.
- Coins never expire — use them in 5 years.
- Client-side processing for 14 of 22 tools.
- No watermarks at any tier.
- Per-operation pricing, shown before you click.
- Same coins for web + public API.