Task
Redact a PDF online — true content removal
The most common 'redaction' mistake is drawing a black rectangle over text. That only hides the visual — the underlying text is still in the PDF content stream, and anyone who selects-and-copies can read it. This is how confidential documents leak all the time.
PennyPDF's redact tool does true content removal: you mark areas or text patterns, and the tool rewrites the underlying content stream to delete those characters entirely. A copy-paste from the redacted output returns empty. An OCR of the redacted output returns nothing. No black-rectangle magic trick.
The free tool does manual region redaction (draw a box, everything inside is removed). Pattern-based redaction — find every SSN/email/phone in the whole document and redact automatically — costs 5 coins and uses the server for regex scanning. Ideal for legal discovery and FOIA responses.
How it works
- 1Upload your PDF at /redact.
- 2Draw a box over each area to redact. Preview toggles show/hide the redaction.
- 3Click Apply. Content is rewritten, not overlaid.
- 4Download. Copy-paste from the output returns empty over redacted regions.
Frequently asked
Is this truly irreversible?+
Yes. The redacted text is deleted from the content stream, not overlaid. Forensic analysis cannot recover it.
Pattern-based redaction?+
Paid tier (5 coins per document). Regex library covers SSN, US phone, email, credit card, date-of-birth. Custom regex in advanced options.
What about metadata?+
Metadata (author, title, creation date) is separate from content. Run /remove-metadata after redacting to strip it fully.
Images of sensitive text?+
Manual region redaction on an image-only PDF removes pixels in the boxed region. For image-based PDFs you typically want to rasterize first, redact visually, and keep as a non-searchable PDF.
Annotations and comments?+
Annotations in redacted regions are removed along with the text.
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.