A Sejda alternative that keeps most PDFs in your browser

pdfdots vs Sejda at a glance

Why people look for a Sejda alternative

The most common reason is simple: you hit the free limit in the middle of a job. Merging a stack of invoices, then compressing the result, then splitting out one page for a colleague can use several tasks in a few minutes. When the counter runs out you either wait or pay. Every freemium tool, including ours, works that way, so compare the limits that fit your week.

The second reason is privacy. On the web, Sejda uploads files to process them (their desktop app is the local option). Many people would rather keep contracts, payslips or medical letters on their own machine without installing anything.

What pdfdots does differently

We ask for a free account. The free plan has a counter of 3 tasks a day; if you need fifty merges in a row, Silver and Gold have no daily limit. Tools such as Merge PDF, Split PDF, Compress PDF, Rotate PDF, Sign PDF, OCR PDF and Edit PDF run locally in the browser tab, so the document is never uploaded.

A handful of conversions need a real office engine: PDF to Word, Word, Excel and PowerPoint to PDF, PDF to Excel, PDF to PowerPoint, PDF to PDF/A, Grayscale PDF and HTML to PDF. For those, the file goes over HTTPS to our own converter in Germany, is processed and is not kept. If you want to keep results, My files gives every free account 100 MB of storage (more on paid plans), encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM on servers in Germany.

• No ads, a free daily plan, paid plans from $2.99/month
• Browser-side processing for most of the roughly 37 tools
• One account for the website and the PDF Dots mobile app

When Sejda is the better choice

If you need to change the wording of existing text in a PDF as if it were a word processor, Sejda's editor is more capable than ours today; our Edit PDF adds new text, images and shapes on top of the page. If you want a polished offline desktop program and are happy to pay for it, Sejda Desktop is a solid option. And if you only need one quick task every few weeks and do not want to create any account, Sejda's free tier without sign-up is hard to beat.

How to do your usual Sejda tasks in pdfdots

Sign in once, then pick the tool from the menu. Most Sejda habits map one to one: Merge PDF combines files in the order you drag them, Split PDF cuts by page ranges, Compress PDF shrinks scans, and Organize PDF lets you reorder, rotate and delete pages visually. For forms use Fill PDF Form, for signatures Sign PDF, and for scanned documents OCR PDF makes the text searchable.

Because the browser tools do not upload anything, large files also depend on your device's memory, within the plan's file size limit. On a phone, the PDF Dots app gives you the same tools with the same account.

Sejda tasks people ask us about most

Sejda's free tier counts tasks per hour; ours counts tasks per day. That changes how you plan a job. On the free plan it pays to chain steps sensibly, for example merging first and compressing once, instead of compressing every file separately. These are the requests we see most from former Sejda users.

• Pulling a few pages out of a long report: Extract Pages if you want one new file, Split PDF if you need several page ranges. Both run in your browser.
• Correcting a figure or a name: Edit PDF can white out the old text and place new text on top. It does not rewrite the original paragraph, which is where Sejda's editor is stronger.
• Getting under an upload portal's limit: Compress PDF locally, then check the size before you submit.
• Turning a PDF into Word or Excel: these conversions go to our server in Germany and are deleted after; free files can be up to 10 MB, and no plan sends more than 50 MB to the converter.
• Signing and returning a form: Fill PDF Form, Sign PDF, then Flatten PDF so the fields cannot be changed. If others must sign too, send it from Studio instead.

Tools to try instead

Frequently asked questions