getPDF and Smallpdf: what is free, what it costs, where your files go

We make getPDF, so read this knowing who wrote it. Every claim about Smallpdf below was checked on 11 October 2026 on Smallpdf’s own pages, listed under the article. The whole field is on the best free PDF tools, compared, and the other comparisons are under Compare.

Side by side

	Smallpdf	getPDF
Price	Free plan; Pro 10 euros a month, or 7.50 a month billed as 90 euros a year; Team 6 euros per seat a month, billed yearly; 7-day free trial	Free, every tool; optional donations
Free tier: tasks	A daily download limit on most tools; no number stated	No count
Free tier: file size	“Limited”; no number stated (50 MB for its AI tools)	No fixed limit; your device’s memory, and the tool says when a file will not fit
Free tier: pages	Not stated	No limit
Where files are processed	Its servers, in Ireland according to its safety page	In your browser, on your device
How long files are kept	1 hour for free tools (safety page); see below for the privacy notice’s wording	Never stored anywhere but your device
Account needed	No for the tools; sharing needs a free account	No; there are no accounts
Watermark	Not stated	None
Offline	Desktop app for Windows	Yes in the browser, after the first file has loaded the engine
Editing existing text	Pro only (“Edit Text”)	Yes, free, line by line; paragraphs do not reflow
OCR	PDF OCR on free, with the daily limit; OCR inside PDF to Word, Excel and PowerPoint is Pro	Free, any page count, 11 languages, confidence per page
E-sign	Sign with the daily limit; Sign.com free account limited to 2 documents a month; requests, sealing and audit features on paid plans	Drawn, typed or photographed signatures; no requests, no certificates
Batch	Pro only	Compress runs a whole folder; merge takes many files
Mobile	Smallpdf Mobile App, with a daily task limit on free	Works in the phone’s browser; no app
Platforms	Web, Windows desktop app, mobile app	Any current browser on any system

Where Smallpdf is the better pick

• Office files to PDF, and PDF to PowerPoint. Smallpdf converts Word, Excel and PowerPoint in both directions. getPDF has no Word to PDF yet, and no PowerPoint or Excel to PDF.
• AI tools. Chat with PDF, a summariser, translation and a question generator are on Smallpdf, limited on free and unlimited on Pro. getPDF has none.
• Sending documents out for signature. Smallpdf Pro includes Sign.com Premium: signature requests, digital sealing, an activity timeline and a certificate of completion. getPDF signs on your device and cannot send anything to anyone.
• Stored files and sharing. Smallpdf keeps files in your account storage if you choose, and shares them by link. getPDF has no cloud storage; your files stay in your own folders.
• Teams and a vendor to sign with. Team and Business plans add central billing and member management, Smallpdf says it is ISO/IEC 27001 certified, and its privacy notice links a data processing agreement. getPDF has no team features.
• A weak device. Smallpdf’s servers do the heavy work. On getPDF your own device does it, so a very large file needs the memory to match.

Where getPDF is the better pick

• Editing existing text, free. Smallpdf keeps Edit Text for Pro. In the getPDF editor you double-click a line and retype it; when the file’s own font lacks a letter you type, the line is set in a matching bundled font and the editor says so. Edit a PDF shows what a real text edit is.
• No daily counter. Smallpdf’s free tools stop at a daily download limit. getPDF has no count, so a merge, a page delete and a compression on the same afternoon are 3 jobs, not a plan decision.
• Smaller files without a plan. Strong compression and batch compression are Pro on Smallpdf. Compress PDF here has 3 presets or a size target, such as under 2 MB, and runs a whole folder in 1 go.
• OCR into an editable file. On getPDF, OCR PDF then PDF to Word costs nothing; OCR inside PDF to Word is Pro on Smallpdf.
• No trial to remember. There is no card, no trial and nothing to cancel.
• Files that should stay with you. Nothing is uploaded, which matters for leases, payslips and ID scans.

Where your files go

Smallpdf. Your file is uploaded to Smallpdf’s servers and processed there. Its “Is Smallpdf safe?” page says files from free tools are deleted after 1 hour and that its servers are in Ireland. Its privacy notice puts it differently: for users with an account, files are deleted within 1 hour unless saved to file storage; for users without an account, Smallpdf “will generally aim to delete” files “within a reasonable period of time after the last time they were opened”, and the period restarts each time a file is reopened. The notice gives no number for that case. It also says personal data may go to recipients outside the EU, such as in Serbia, or the Philippines for some support cases, under standard safeguards. The company is Smallpdf AG in Zürich, Switzerland. If you handle other people’s files at work, GDPR and online PDF tools explains why the data processing agreement matters.

getPDF. Nothing is uploaded. The engine loads in your browser with your first file and the work happens in your tab. The site’s content security policy lets the page connect only to getPDF’s own address, where nothing accepts files; the only message sent after a job is an anonymous counter with the tool id, success or failure and 2 rough buckets for time and size. The privacy page explains it in plain words.

Check it rather than believe it: use a tool once on a test file, turn Wi-Fi off, and run it on another. If it finishes, the work happened on your device. The Wi-Fi off test adds the network panel view, and Is it safe to upload a PDF to an online converter? covers when uploading is perfectly fine.

Moving from Smallpdf to getPDF

Smallpdf’s most used tools, and where the same job is on getPDF:

Smallpdf tool	On getPDF
Compress	Compress PDF
PDF to Word, PDF to Excel	PDF to Word, PDF to Excel (editable content, not a layout copy)
PDF to image, image to PDF	PDF to JPG, PDF to PNG, JPG to PDF
Merge, Split	Merge PDF, Split PDF
Rotate, Delete, Extract pages	Rotate PDF, Delete pages, Extract pages
Edit PDF, Edit Text, PDF Annotator	Edit PDF, Highlight PDF
Sign	Sign PDF
PDF OCR	OCR PDF
Number Pages, Crop, Watermark	Page numbers, Crop PDF, Watermark
Redact	Redact PDF
Protect, Unlock, Flatten	Protect PDF, Unlock PDF, Flatten PDF

No equivalent yet: Word, Excel and PowerPoint to PDF, PDF to PowerPoint, the AI tools, signature requests, cloud storage and sharing links, and a native mobile app with a scanner. For those, Smallpdf or another installed app is the honest choice today.

Expect 1 difference in conversion: getPDF’s PDF to Word rebuilds text, headings, lists and tables for editing and does not copy the page layout; the tool says so before you start, and PDF to Word, Excel and text explains the difference.

Try the job people most often switch for

Editing the text that is already in a PDF is the Pro feature people most often meet first. Here it is free, with no daily limit:

Edit PDFReal text editing, objects, annotations, forms. Free, runs on your device.Open