The Swiss Army knife for PDFs
Precise text edits that leave every untouched byte alone, plus everything around them: clean scans, OCR, binders, watermarks, redaction. Online, or free and open source on your own machine.
Very Swiss 🇨🇭 but made in Austria 🇦🇹 😎
Online at pdfblah.com |
On your machine |
|
|---|---|---|
| Edit a PDF replace, redact, watermark, metadata… | from $0.40/doc · how pricing works free while testing | Free |
| Tools split, merge, render, compare… | Free | Free |
| Setup | Nothing to install | pip install pdfblah install guide · PyPI |
| Runs on | Our servers | Your machine |
| Your file | Uploaded, auto-deleted in 24 hours | Never leaves your machine |
| Limits | 20 MB per file bigger jobs: run it on your machine, CLI or app | Your hardware |
| Real edits, fonts kept | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open source | Runs the OSS engine | ✓ GitHub |
Real edits: the PDF text itself changes, no overlay boxes, no flattened images. The online version auto-deletes files within 24 hours; nothing is stored, read, or logged.
Edit your PDFs in the browser
Drop in PDFs, stack changes (replace, redact, watermark, page numbers), and watch the before/after preview update live. Download each file or one merged PDF. Free while we're testing.
Open the editor →Run it on your own machine, free
One install (Python 3.9+), then use it however you like: open the app in your browser, or drive it from the command line. Same engine as the website, running fully on your computer. Nothing is uploaded, and there's nothing to compile or sign.
Install · macOS & Linux
curl -fsSL https://pdfblah.com/install.sh | shInstall · Windows (PowerShell)
irm https://pdfblah.com/install.ps1 | iexOpen it in your browser
Runs the same interface as this site, served from your machine. Drop in a PDF, make your edits, and save the file to your computer.
pdfblah gui
Or from the command line
Edit one file or a whole folder in a single run, with a report of what changed. Built for bulk jobs, scripting, and CI pipelines.
pdfblah in.pdf out.pdf --rules rules.txt
Same rules format everywhere. Full guide · GitHub.
Only the text you change changes
Most PDF tools rebuild the whole page to change one word. pdfblah rewrites the matched text and leaves every other byte alone. Same one-number edit on a real invoice, measured:
- Only the edited line changed
- File size 14.1 KB before, 14.1 KB after
- Fonts, layout and metadata byte-for-byte identical
- Rebuilt the whole page to change one value
- File size up 51%
- Changed 3 more things nobody asked for, shoving both timestamps into their clock icons
Read the full comparison with screenshots · Your file is processed only to make your edit, then deleted within 24 hours.