I’ve never paid for Adobe Acrobat for longer than a few months at a time, and every time I’d wonder why I locked myself into a payment just to edit some text on my PDFs. If you’re still forking over a monthly fee for Acrobat to access the same, simple features, you’re getting robbed.

Enter OmniTools: a zero-cost, open-source, privacy-first PDF toolkit that runs in your browser. It does most of what everyday users turn to Acrobat for, plus much more. And it doesn’t lock any of its features behind a paywall or require you to upload your files to the cloud.

OmniTools is private and portable by default

Edit sensitive PDFs on any device

With OmniTools, your files never leave your device; everything runs locally in your browser. So if you’re working with PDFs that contain contracts, taxes, IDs, invoices, or any other private stuff, all of it stays with you. And if you want total control, you can host the app on your own server (get the code on GitHub here). I’ve yet to come across another PDF tool that offers this level of privacy without strings attached.

Plus, because it’s a lightweight web app, it works instantly on any device. You don’t need to download yet another app that will only gobble up space on your device, slow it down, or annoy you with updates. I can easily use it on my Chromebook, which has modest performance at best. Why pay for Acrobat’s bloat when you can have control over an effective tool for free?

It covers everyday PDF functions you actually need

All of the core PDF features for free

The free version of Acrobat is very limited. All you can do is view your PDFs, highlight some text, and print the files. To get even the basic editing functions, you’ll need to pay for one of the subscriptions. OmniTools, on the other hand, covers all your basics and more.

When you head to OmniTools’ PDF page, you’ll notice eight different PDF tools. The first one is the PDF Editor and viewer. This is where you’ll import your files, add or edit text, insert pictures, add your signature, and a few other useful things like checkbox icons. The tools are a little barebones — they don’t have color or font options (but OmniTools’ image editor does have those options if you’re willing to do some file conversion).

If you want to extract a single page from a PDF document, pop it in the Split tool and specify the page you want to export as a new file. With Merge, you can upload multiple PDF files to combine them into one single PDF file. If you need to change your PDF to a landscape orientation, OmniTools has you covered here once again - just upload your file to the Rotate PDF tool and select your rotation angle.

You’ve probably had this happen before: You attach your PDF to your email, but can't send it through due to the file size limit. OmniTools’ PDF Compress tool solves the problem in seconds. It allows you to select from three compression settings: low, with no quality loss; medium; and high, with some quality loss. Additionally, there are PDF-to-EPUB and PDF-to-PNG converters. This allows you to get your PDF files publish-ready and enhance readability, or upload them to certain social media platforms as images.

And tying in nicely with its privacy-focused philosophy, OmniTools has a Protect PDF tool that lets you add a password. Sure, Acrobat offers this for free as well, but everything remains completely secure and private with OmniTools since it doesn’t rely on the cloud. Plus, I’ve found that OmniTools’ password feature works much quicker than Adobe’s.

It truly is an omnipotent tool

OmniTools includes a variety of media and data editors

OmniTools is more than a PDF tool; it's a whole toolkit for everything around your files. You've got a full stack of handy editors and converters built right in, so you don’t have to keep hopping between apps - or pay for Acrobat.

If you’re prepping a report and need to tweak an image in your file, the Image tools can crop, resize, remove the background, or make some creative adjustments with filters. It also has an OCR tool to extract text from your images, which is a paid feature in Acrobat. There are also GIF, Video, and Audio tools for cleaning up other media you attach to a PDF.

If you work with data-heavy files, the JSON, XML, and CSV tools are a lifesaver. You can validate and beautify XML files, a function Acrobat doesn’t offer at all. You can clean up messy CSV exports directly with OmniTools, whereas Acrobat only offers CSV conversion. And the JSON toolkit is also plentiful. You can validate, prettify, stringify, and minify JSON files, whereas Acrobat doesn’t directly read JSON files.

The Text tool is an absolute powerhouse that helps you prep and clean up text before dropping it in your PDF. The Lists tool is another handy one for sorting, shuffling, and reformatting plain lists - perfect for prepping reports or surveys before adding them to a PDF. There’s even a Numbers tool that is also a handy grab for quick math tasks. All of Acrobat’s equivalents pale in comparison or simply don't exist.

OmniTools takes PDF handling to the next level by bundling all these little side tools you’d either have to hunt for on random sites or pay for on Acrobat.

Why pay more for less?

I can't justify paying Adobe’s bloated price for stuff you can do faster, privately, and for free. The OmniTools PDF toolkit proves you don’t need a subscription to handle the basics - or even the extras. Give it a shot, and you might wonder why you paid for Acrobat in the first place.