Or choose them. Files are processed in this tab and never uploaded to any server.
Put an invoice, its supporting receipts and a signed cover letter into a single PDF, or join the chapters of a report that were exported one by one. Pages are copied object for object by pdf-lib, so text stays selectable, vector drawings stay sharp, and nothing is re-compressed or re-rendered along the way. The files are read inside this tab — which matters when what you are merging is a contract, a bank statement or a passport scan.
How it works
- Files are joined top to bottom as they appear in the list, or in natural file-name order (page-2 before page-10) if you pick that instead.
- Hopding/pdf-lib (8k+ stars, MIT) copies each page with its fonts and images into a new document; nothing is rasterized.
- Encrypted or password-protected PDFs are refused with an explanation, because pdf-lib cannot decrypt them and would otherwise write blank pages.
Where your data goes
Nowhere. This tool runs entirely in your browser: the text you paste is processed by the page and is never transmitted to a server or written to a log.
This tool is free and needs no account. Its results exist only in your open page and are not saved anywhere.
What it costs
This tool is free, with no sign-in and no points.
Common questions
- Why was my PDF rejected as encrypted when it opens without a password?
- Many PDFs carry an owner password that only restricts printing or copying. They open freely in a reader, but their content is still encrypted on disk, and pdf-lib has no decryption. Print it to a new PDF from your reader, or run qpdf --decrypt in.pdf out.pdf, and the copy will merge normally.
- Will bookmarks, links and form fields survive?
- Page content, annotations and link rectangles are copied, but the document-level outline (the bookmarks panel) is not, and fillable form fields can lose their connection to the form and become static. If you need those intact, merge with a desktop tool such as qpdf.
- Is there a size or page limit?
- Each file can be up to 200 MB. The practical limit is your device's memory, since the merged document is assembled in the tab: a few thousand pages is fine on a laptop, rather less on a phone.
- What should I use for heavier jobs?
- Stirling-Tools/Stirling-PDF (90k+ stars) is the self-hosted toolkit most people run for this: a Docker container with merge, OCR, compression, redaction and dozens of other operations, for when you need them on a server, in bulk, or behind an API.
The open-source behind it
This tool runs on Hopding/pdf-lib, released under MIT. If you need the same behaviour inside your own program, that is the library to reach for.
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