Terms of Service

Welcome to PDF7.org. This page describes the rules that apply when you use our service. It's a legal document, but also a fair reflection of how we work — that's why it's written to be read rather than skimmed.

Before the formal sections, two things worth clarifying.

PDF7.org is an independent project. Other sites may operate under the same name with different extensions (pdf7.app, pdf7.com and the like). Those sites do not share ownership, code or business structure with PDF7.org. Any reviews — positive or negative — that you may have seen about them do not represent us. PDF7.org operates from a single address, pdf7.org. If we ever launch an official extension (for example a mobile app), it will be announced clearly on this page.

PDF7 was created as an alternative to the recurring problems we kept seeing in the PDF processing space: user files quietly being forwarded to third parties, "free" services with hidden charges, simple tasks buried inside overly complex interfaces, and conversions that often didn't even produce correct output. PDF7.org was built so that none of those things would be true here — a quiet, honest infrastructure that respects the files it handles.

1. What PDF7 Is

PDF7 is a free platform offering online PDF editing and format conversion tools, plus a full set of image tools. On the PDF side: merge, split, compress, rotate, password-protect, and various format conversions. On the image side: compression, batch compression, resizing, cropping, rotation, collage creation, watermarking and format conversion — dozens of supporting tools. Everything runs in the browser, with no account required and no email asked.

2. Fair Use

Since the service is freely available to everyone, we ask all users to follow a few basic ground rules so it can stay reliable and fair:

• Legal use only. Criminal, harmful or otherwise prohibited content must not be processed through PDF7.
• Files you own or have rights to. Only upload documents that belong to you or that you're authorised to use.
• No automated abuse. Hundreds of requests per second, fake traffic or attack attempts degrade the service for everyone. If you have a legitimate use case involving heavy or programmatic usage, simply get in touch — we'll usually find a workable arrangement.

3. What Happens to Your Files

You retain full copyright and content responsibility for everything you upload. Illegal, rights-violating or harmful content is prohibited.

On our side, files only stay in server memory for the duration of the operation. Once the processing finishes and your download completes, the file is gone. It isn't written to disk, isn't backed up, isn't passed to any third-party service, isn't analysed, and isn't sent to any data warehouse.

A natural consequence of this design: because PDF7 keeps no user data, we cannot recover a file if the operation was interrupted (a tab closing, a dropped connection). There's no account, no history, no backup — so a lost file cannot be reproduced. This is a deliberate trade-off: data that's never kept can never be reached by anyone else either.

4. Independent Engineering — Why This Site Can Exist

PDF7's infrastructure and every tool's processing engine were built from scratch by our own team. Merging, conversion, compression, OCR — each tool has months of development, testing and refinement behind it. The level of quality you see is the result of work done on our own engines.

None of the pages rely on a third-party company's API, a paid external service or a turnkey backend. Because we don't outsource conversion to anyone, your files are never forwarded to another company's servers. This is the underlying reason the service can stay both inexpensive to run and free to use.

Unlike many comparable platforms, user information is not shared with any third party — including advertising partners. There is no outbound data flow, because there is no data being held internally to begin with.

5. Service Limits

To keep capacity reasonable and the experience fair, each tool runs with its own limits. File size sits around 150 MB for most tools; in some it goes higher. Page and file-count limits are shown directly on each tool page.

These limits are temporary. As the user base grows and the infrastructure expands, the limits will be raised accordingly.

6. Quality and Warranty

The service is provided "as is." Conversion quality may vary depending on the source file — scanned documents, unusual fonts and damaged PDFs can produce different results. For critical documents we recommend reviewing the output. If you run into an unexpected result, the contact form is the right place to let us know; reports are reviewed regularly.

7. Limitation of Liability

PDF7 cannot be held liable for direct or indirect damages arising from use of the service — including file loss, conversion errors and service interruptions. This is a standard legal limitation.

8. Pricing, Advertising and Donations

PDF7 is fully free today. Every tool can be used without an account, without entering card details, with no usage cap. There is no upsell path to a paid plan.

Two things make that possible. First, the independent engineering described above: no licence fees go out to any external service. Second, the advertising shown on pages. Ads come through well-known networks and are selected based on the topic of the page — not based on the file you uploaded or your behaviour. They never interrupt the upload or download flow.

An optional donation channel is planned for the future. Donations will be handled through independent platforms such as Buy Me a Coffee or Patreon — your card details never reach PDF7. Any donations received will be redirected entirely to infrastructure: stronger servers, higher limits, more tools.

Even if a paid feature is eventually introduced for professional use, the existing free service will not be discontinued. Any future payment flow will run through PCI-DSS-certified providers such as Stripe; card details would not be transmitted to PDF7 at any point.

9. Where We Are Heading

One of our goals is to run more tools entirely inside the browser. In that model, the file never leaves the user's device. It's both the fastest approach and the strongest from a privacy standpoint. A few of our tools already work this way; the rest will be migrated to the same model over time.

10. Intellectual Property

The design, logo, content, source code and processing engines of PDF7.org belong to PDF7 and are protected by copyright. Copying, redistribution, reverse-engineering or modification without permission is not allowed. Reach out for quoting, screenshots or partnership requests — reasonable cases are welcome.

11. Changes to These Terms

These terms may be updated over time. The current version is always published on this page with the update date noted at the top. Continued use of the site means acceptance of the current terms.

12. Contact

For questions about these terms, copyright complaints, abuse reports or collaboration proposals, please reach out via the Contact page.