Why is Toolsly free without limits if Smallpdf isn't?

Because Toolsly does the work on your machine. We pay close to nothing per conversion — there's no server CPU billed per file. Smallpdf's costs scale linearly with usage, so they have to charge.

Yes — they're SOC 2 compliant and auto-delete files after 1 hour. For most documents that's plenty safe. For documents that should never touch a third-party server (medical, legal, government), Toolsly's local processing is a better fit.

Does Toolsly have an OCR tool?

Not today. OCR running in-browser is technically possible (Tesseract.js) but slow. If OCR is the only thing missing for you, Smallpdf, Adobe, or Google Drive's built-in OCR will be faster for now.

Can Toolsly handle multi-hundred-MB PDFs?

Yes, up to your browser's memory budget — typically 2 GB. We test with 500 MB files routinely. The bottleneck is your CPU + RAM, not a server queue.

Comparisonscomparison pdf smallpdf

Toolsly vs Smallpdf: The honest comparison

May 19, 2026 · Toolsly

Toolsly vs Smallpdf compared on price, privacy, ad load, file-size limits, and the breadth of tools.

What each does

Smallpdf is a Swiss-based PDF SaaS that's grown into a 25-tool web app since 2013. Polished UX, big enterprise customer logos, and a freemium model that throttles aggressively without a subscription. Toolsly is a free, browser-first toolbox with PDF, image, audio, video, and developer utilities — 230+ tools total — all processed locally.

Free tier — what you actually get

	Toolsly	Smallpdf
Free PDF conversions/day	Unlimited	2
Free file size cap	~2 GB (browser memory)	5 MB
Account required	No	Email signup pushes hard
Watermarks	None	None
Ads	None	Some

The Smallpdf free tier is designed to nudge you to Pro (€7.50/mo). For occasional users it's fine; if you're converting more than 2 PDFs a day you'll bounce off the daily limit fast.

Privacy: who sees your files

Smallpdf processes files on their servers. Per their privacy policy, files are deleted automatically after 1 hour. They're SOC 2 compliant. For most use cases that's trustworthy.

Toolsly doesn't have servers in the picture. The conversion JavaScript runs in your browser. Want to verify? Open DevTools → Network tab while you convert a file. You'll see zero requests transmitting your file content. For sensitive documents — contracts, tax forms, medical records — this is a meaningful difference.

Tool breadth

Smallpdf has 25 tools, all PDF-adjacent:

Convert to/from PDF (Word, Excel, PPT, images)
Compress, merge, split, rotate
eSign, edit, watermark
OCR (paid)

Toolsly has 230+ tools across:

PDF (35+): convert from anything, edit (merge, split, rotate, watermark, page numbers, metadata, delete pages, extract pages, reorder, compress)
Images (60+): every format pair (PNG/JPG/WebP/AVIF/GIF/BMP/TIFF/HEIC/SVG/ICO), crop, resize, compress, effects, favicon set
Audio (18): MP3/WAV/OGG/FLAC/AAC/M4A/Opus all directions, audio extraction from video
Video (15): MP4/WebM/MKV/MOV/AVI conversions, video-to-GIF, audio extraction
Text & encoding (44): base64, URL, hex, JWT, hash (MD5/SHA), UUID, JSON tools, regex tester, password generator
Color (12): converter, palette, gradient, contrast checker
Dev (10): minify/beautify HTML/CSS/JS, SQL formatter
Calculators (6): BMI, percentage, age, date diff, tip, timezone converter
Payment-card (17): Luhn check, BIN lookup, EMV TLV decoder, IBAN/SWIFT validators
Diagrams (4): Mermaid → SVG/PNG/JPG/PDF

Where Smallpdf wins

OCR. They have it; we don't (yet).
eSign with audit trail. Their eSign product is a real signing flow with provenance and PDF-A archival; we don't replicate this.
Word / Excel format fidelity on conversion. Their server-side conversion preserves layouts better than our in-browser approach.
Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace integration — both have official Smallpdf add-ons.

Where Toolsly wins

No daily limits. Use it 100 times a day, same as 1.
No file-size cap. Multi-hundred-MB PDFs work as long as your laptop has the RAM.
Privacy. Files never leave your browser.
Tool breadth. ~10× more tools across more file types.
No upsell. No login walls, no "upgrade to remove watermarks" prompts.
Speed for small/medium files. No upload roundtrip = often 2–3× faster end-to-end.

Which to pick

Heavy PDF user with sensitive docs → Toolsly
Need OCR or eSign with audit trail → Smallpdf
Working from Word / Google Docs → Smallpdf has the integrations
Need 200+ tools beyond PDFs → Toolsly
Privacy-conscious / regulated industry → Toolsly

Try the PDF tools on Toolsly to see if it covers your workflow.

Frequently asked questions

Why is Toolsly free without limits if Smallpdf isn't?: Because Toolsly does the work on your machine. We pay close to nothing per conversion — there's no server CPU billed per file. Smallpdf's costs scale linearly with usage, so they have to charge.
Is Smallpdf safe?: Yes — they're SOC 2 compliant and auto-delete files after 1 hour. For most documents that's plenty safe. For documents that should never touch a third-party server (medical, legal, government), Toolsly's local processing is a better fit.
Does Toolsly have an OCR tool?: Not today. OCR running in-browser is technically possible (Tesseract.js) but slow. If OCR is the only thing missing for you, Smallpdf, Adobe, or Google Drive's built-in OCR will be faster for now.
Can Toolsly handle multi-hundred-MB PDFs?: Yes, up to your browser's memory budget — typically 2 GB. We test with 500 MB files routinely. The bottleneck is your CPU + RAM, not a server queue.