Best Free PDF Tools Online: Merge, Compress, Convert & Split

The best free PDF tools online are the ones that do the job without uploading your documents. Toolstik's five PDF tools cover the tasks most people need: merge PDFs, split or extract pages, compress a PDF, convert JPG to PDF, and convert PDF to JPG. Every one runs in your browser, is free with no sign-up, and adds no watermark. This guide explains what each tool does and doesn't do, how they work together, and when a desktop app is the better choice.

The Toolstik PDF toolkit at a glance

You'll find all of them, plus the invoice generator, in the document tools category.

Merge PDF

Merge PDF joins two or more PDFs into a single document. Drop your files in, arrange them with the ↑ and ↓ buttons, add more with + Add files, and click Merge PDFs. The result panel shows the total Pages and Files merged, and the download is always named merged.pdf.

What to know:

• It reorders whole files, not individual pages. To drop or rearrange pages, extract them with the splitter first.
• Pages are copied exactly as they are, with the same size, rotation, and quality.
• The bookmark outline from the source files isn't carried over, and fillable form fields may not behave as they did in the originals.

Good for: job application packets, contracts with appendices, monthly statements into one archive file.

Guide: How to merge PDF files online

PDF Splitter: split and extract pages

The PDF Splitter has three modes in its Split mode menu:

• Extract pages to one PDF (the default): type pages like 1-3,5 to get a single new PDF with just those pages, named name-extract.pdf. Pages come out in ascending order with duplicates removed.
• Each page as separate PDF: every page becomes its own file (name-page-1.pdf, name-page-2.pdf, and so on), downloaded as a ZIP.
• Split into multiple PDFs: each comma-separated group becomes a file. 1-4,5-8,9-12 gives three PDFs named name-part-1.pdf to name-part-3.pdf, also in a ZIP.

Page numbers are 1-based and match the page count in your viewer. Type a page that doesn't exist and you'll get a clear message such as "Page 13 is out of range. This PDF has 12 page(s)."

Extraction is also how you delete pages: to remove page 4 from a 10-page file, extract 1-3,5-10.

Guides:

• How to split a PDF into multiple files: every page, chapters, and page groups
• How to extract pages from a PDF: pull specific pages into one new file

PDF Compressor

The PDF Compressor takes one PDF and saves it again with a more compact internal layout. Click Compress PDF and the result panel shows Original size, Output size, Saved, and Reduction. If the rebuilt file isn't smaller, you'll see PDF is already optimized and keep the original.

What to know:

• It's lossless. Images, fonts, and text aren't changed, so nothing looks different.
• There are no compression levels or quality settings.
• Savings depend entirely on how the PDF was made. Files with an inefficient structure can shrink, while scanned or photo-heavy PDFs usually don't change much, because their images aren't recompressed.

Good for: trying a quick, risk-free size reduction before emailing or uploading.

Guides:

• How to compress a PDF online
• PDF compression vs conversion: what to do when compression isn't enough

JPG to PDF

JPG to PDF places JPG or PNG images onto PDF pages, one image per page. Choose a Page size (A4, Letter, or Fit to image), an Orientation (Portrait or Landscape), and a Margin (pt) from 0 to 144 (the default is 36, or half an inch). Then click Convert to PDF.

What to know:

• Images are centred and scaled down to fit, but never enlarged. A small image stays small in the middle of an A4 page unless you choose Fit to image.
• Images are embedded unchanged, so the PDF is about as big as your images combined. Compress or resize them first for a smaller file.
• Only JPG and PNG are accepted. Convert HEIC or WebP first.
• There's no OCR, so text in photos isn't searchable.

Good for: receipts, ID scans, signed paper forms photographed on a phone, and photo reports.

Guide: How to convert JPG to PDF

PDF to JPG

PDF to JPG renders every page of a PDF as a JPG image using PDF.js. The only setting is the JPEG quality slider, which runs from 50% to 100% and defaults to 85%. Click Convert to JPG, then Download for a single page or Download ZIP for several.

What to know:

• It always exports all pages. For a single page, extract it with the splitter first.
• Pages are rendered at 1.5× scale, which works out to 108 pixels per inch. A Letter page becomes 918 × 1,188 pixels: great for screens, but low for professional print.
• Text in the images isn't selectable.

Good for: slides, social posts, website previews, and pasting a page into a document.

Guide: How to convert PDF to JPG

Workflows that combine the tools

The tools are most useful together. These are the combinations that come up most often.

Shrink an attachment that's too big

1. Remove pages the recipient doesn't need with the PDF Splitter in Extract pages to one PDF mode.
2. Run the result through the PDF Compressor.
3. If it's still over the limit, split it into parts with Split into multiple PDFs and send them separately.

Build one PDF from photos and existing documents

1. If your photos came from an iPhone, convert them with HEIC to JPG.
2. Shrink large photos with the Image Compressor or Image Resizer.
3. Turn them into a PDF with JPG to PDF.
4. Combine that PDF with your other documents using Merge PDF.
5. Compress the merged file once at the end.

Reorder pages

Merge PDF can't reorder pages inside a file, but you can get there in two steps: split the document into sections with the PDF Splitter, then merge the sections back in the order you want.

Get one page as an image

Extract the page with the PDF Splitter, then convert the 1-page PDF with PDF to JPG. Convert the JPG to WebP or PNG with the Image Converter if needed.

Re-encode a bloated scanned PDF

When a scan won't compress, export the pages with PDF to JPG at a lower quality, then rebuild them with JPG to PDF using the original page size and a 0 margin. You lose any selectable text, so read PDF compression vs conversion before trying it.

Privacy: how the processing works

All five PDF tools run entirely in your browser:

• Merge PDF, PDF Splitter, PDF Compressor, and JPG to PDF use pdf-lib, an open-source JavaScript PDF library.
• PDF to JPG uses PDF.js, Mozilla's open-source PDF renderer, the same engine behind Firefox's built-in PDF viewer.

Your files are read from your device, processed in memory, and downloaded back to your device. They aren't sent to Toolstik servers. The site records anonymous usage events, such as which tool was used and how many files were selected, but never the files or their contents. That makes these tools a reasonable fit for contracts, payslips, medical letters, and ID documents.

Because everything happens on your device, speed and maximum practical file size depend on your hardware. A laptop handles a 50 MB PDF comfortably, but an older phone may struggle.

Common problems across all PDF tools

• Password-protected PDFs. None of the tools can remove a password. Depending on the protection, a tool may fail with an error or produce blank pages. Save an unlocked copy in an app that knows the password, if you're permitted to, and use that.
• Files that won't add. Files over the size limit (50 MB for PDFs, 25 MB for images), empty files, and unsupported formats are skipped when you add them.
• Damaged PDFs. If a file won't open in your normal PDF viewer, the tools won't be able to read it either. Re-download or re-export it.
• Memory limits on phones. Long documents, big scans, or many files at once can slow down or crash a mobile browser tab. Work in smaller batches.

When a desktop app is the better choice

Browser tools cover everyday jobs, but some tasks need more:

• Editing text, adding signatures, filling forms, or running OCR: use Adobe Acrobat or a comparable PDF editor. Toolstik doesn't edit page content.
• Aggressive image compression with fine control: Acrobat's Optimize PDF, or macOS Preview's Reduce File Size export filter, can downsample images. The Toolstik compressor is lossless and doesn't.
• Page-by-page rearranging with thumbnails: macOS Preview's sidebar lets you drag individual pages around, which is handy for one-off reordering.
• Print-resolution page images: Acrobat and Preview let you choose the export resolution, while Toolstik's PDF to JPG is fixed at 108 pixels per inch.
• Creating PDFs from other apps on Windows: Microsoft Print to PDF turns anything you can print into a PDF. Chrome's Save as PDF does the same for web pages.

Related tools beyond PDFs

If your PDF work involves images, the best free image tools online guide covers compressing, resizing, and converting photos. To create PDF invoices, the Invoice Generator builds them in your browser too, as explained in how to create an invoice for free.

Browse every tool in the Toolstik tools directory, or start from the free online tools hub.