iLovePDF is fast and polished, but every file you touch goes to their servers. PDFShore does compress, merge, and split in the browser. Here's an honest comparison.
iLovePDF launched in 2010 and now serves roughly ten million visits a month. It works. The interface is clean, the tool catalog is huge, and most jobs complete in seconds. There's a reason it ranks at the top of every "best PDF tool" list.
The trade-off is that every PDF you process gets uploaded to their infrastructure. They say files are deleted within two hours. That's accurate as a policy, but the file still leaves your device. For a meme PDF, fine. For a contract, an ID scan, or a medical record, it's a different conversation.
PDFShore runs entirely in the browser using pdf-lib, pdfjs-dist, and Web Workers. The file never travels to a server. There's no upload step, no queue, no temporary copy anyone can recover, and no account tying the document to a user identity. That architecture is the privacy guarantee. It isn't a policy line; it's what the code does.
Specific differences a user notices:
| Feature | PDFShore | iLovePDF |
|---|---|---|
| File leaves your device | No | Yes |
| Account required | No | Optional (required for batch and large files) |
| Price | Free | Free tier + paid plans |
| Works offline after first load | Yes | No |
| Tool catalog | Compress, merge, split | 30+ tools |
| OCR / format conversion | Not yet | Yes |
| Max file size | ~100 MB | Higher, server-side |
If you need OCR, format conversion, signing, or you process PDFs that are larger than what a browser tab can hold, iLovePDF is a reasonable choice. They built a real product.
Anything you'd rather not have sitting on someone else's server, even for two hours. Contracts. Tax forms. Bank statements. Documents from a client. Documents from your kid's school. Anything you'd hand someone in an envelope rather than email in plain text.
It's also a better choice if you don't want to manage another account, or if you're on a slow connection and don't want to upload 50 MB just to download a slightly smaller version back.
PDFShore runs in your browser. No upload, no account, no daily limit. Pick a tool: