Redact PDF Online Free — No Upload, True Text Removal

New to PDF redaction? Read the deep-dive tutorial: How to Redact a PDF Online for Free — Step-by-Step.

How to redact a PDF for free — step by step

Drop your PDF onto the box above. It stays on your device — nothing uploads.
The tool renders each page and auto-scans the text layer for SSN (XXX-XX-XXXX), credit-card numbers (Luhn-validated), phone numbers and email addresses. Every match appears as a colored box over the page thumbnail.
Click any box to toggle it on or off. Double-click to remove it. The count of “marked for redaction” updates live.
Click Draw a manual box to switch to drawing mode, then drag a rectangle over any region — names, addresses, dates of birth, account numbers, license numbers, anything the auto-detect misses.
Click Redact & download PDF. Each page is rasterized to a bitmap, the marked regions are painted solid black onto the bitmap, and the pages are re-embedded into a new PDF as JPEG images. The redacted file downloads to your device.

What real PDF redaction actually means

Half the free “redact PDF” tools online do not do real redaction — they draw a black rectangle on top of the text as an annotation. Anyone opening the resulting PDF can select the covered text, copy it out, or delete the annotation to reveal the original. Court filings and government agencies have been embarrassed by exactly this mistake many times: Manafort v. United States, the Department of Justice's Michael Flynn filings, and countless corporate settlement agreements have all leaked because someone used a “black-rectangle-on-top” tool.

This tool does real redaction. Under the hood, each page is rasterized to a bitmap via pdf.js, black rectangles are painted onto the bitmap at the marked coordinates, and the pages are re-embedded into a new PDF as JPEG images via pdf-lib. The original text objects are discarded. Try it: after downloading the redacted PDF, open it in Adobe Reader and try to select the redacted region — nothing is there to select.

How to redact a PDF without Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat's Redact tool is behind Acrobat Pro (~$20/month). You do not need it. This page does the same job — real rasterized redaction — for free, in your browser, on any device. The output PDF opens the same way in Acrobat Reader, Preview on macOS, mobile PDF viewers, and every other reader. No subscription, no app install.

Auto-detect: what patterns are found

The auto-scan reads the PDF's text layer via pdf.js and matches four families of personally-identifiable information:

Social Security Numbers in the standard US format XXX-XX-XXXX.
Credit-card numbers — 13 to 19 digits, optionally separated by spaces or dashes, and validated against the Luhn checksum so phone numbers, invoice IDs and account numbers are not mistaken for cards.
Phone numbers in US, UK, EU and international formats (with or without country code, various separators).
Email addresses matching the standard user@domain.tld form.

Auto-detect works only when the PDF has a real text layer. Scanned PDFs that are just images have no text to scan — run them through our OCR tool first to add a text layer, then bring the result here. Manual boxes work on any PDF regardless of text layer.

When to redact a PDF

Legal filings — court records, discovery documents, settlement agreements. Redact plaintiff/defendant addresses, minor children's names, medical details, financial account numbers.
Medical records — sharing with insurance, second-opinion doctors, or research studies under HIPAA. Redact patient identifiers while keeping clinical detail.
HR and employment — background check files, employee references, terminations. Redact SSN, DOB, home address, salary.
Financial documents — bank statements, tax returns, loan applications shared with landlords, accountants, or advisors. Redact account numbers, transaction IDs, everything but the fields the counterparty actually needs.
Government / FOIA responses — agencies redacting personal names, source-protecting identifiers, security-sensitive details before public release.
Journalism — protecting source identity in leaked documents that must be published verifiably.
Personal ID copies — sharing a passport or driver's license copy for verification but hiding the number.

How to redact a PDF on iPhone or Android

Open this page in Safari on iPhone / iPad or Chrome on Android. Tap the drop zone and pick the PDF from Files, iCloud Drive, Google Drive, or wherever you keep it. Auto-detected PII shows up as colored boxes on each page thumbnail — tap each to include or exclude. Tap Draw a manual box to add rectangles by touch (a two-finger touch works like a mouse drag on most mobile browsers). Tap Redact & download and the redacted PDF downloads to your device.

How to remove personal information from a PDF permanently

“Remove” is the key word. This tool does permanent removal — the text you black out is gone from the PDF, not hidden under an overlay. That's critical when you're sharing a document that will be forwarded, uploaded to a portal, or archived long-term. Every marked region is rasterized (turned into image pixels) before the PDF is repackaged, so no text extraction, no annotation-removal trick, and no re-editing can bring it back.

Privacy — nothing uploaded, ever

Redaction is the one tool where privacy matters the most, because the whole point is that you have something sensitive to remove. Every step here happens in your browser: reading the PDF (pdf.js), scanning for PII, rendering page thumbnails, painting black boxes on canvas, and packaging the output PDF (pdf-lib). Nothing about your document, its filename, or the detected PII reaches our servers or any third party. If we were breached tomorrow, your document would still be safe because we don't have it — and neither does anyone else.

How this compares to iLovePDF, Smallpdf, and Adobe Acrobat

iLovePDF does not have a real redaction tool. Their “edit PDF” feature lets you draw shapes over text as an annotation, which is not real redaction — the covered text can be selected and copied by anyone who opens the file. Smallpdf has a redact tool but it's behind their Pro plan ($9/month), and it uploads your PDF to their servers. Adobe Acrobat Pro does real redaction but requires a $20/month subscription and a desktop-app install. This page does the same real redaction Acrobat Pro does, for free, in your browser, with nothing uploaded.

Frequently asked questions

How do I redact a PDF for free?

Drop your PDF onto this page. The tool auto-scans for SSN, credit-card, phone and email patterns and shows them as red boxes over the page. Click boxes to include or exclude. Click "Draw a manual box" to redact names, addresses or anything else. Then click "Redact & download PDF". Every marked region is rasterized to solid black — the underlying text is truly gone, not just hidden. Free, no signup, no watermark, no upload.

How to redact a PDF without Adobe Acrobat?

Adobe Acrobat's redaction feature is behind Acrobat Pro (~$20/month). You do not need it. This tool does real redaction — rasterizing each redacted region so the removed text can never be recovered — for free, entirely in your browser. The output PDF opens in any reader (Acrobat, Preview, Chrome, iOS, Android). Same result, no subscription.

Is this true redaction, or just a black box on top of text?

This is real redaction. When you click Redact, each page is rasterized to a bitmap, the black rectangles are painted onto the bitmap, and the whole page is re-embedded into a new PDF as a JPEG image. The original text objects are gone — you cannot select the redacted text, cannot copy it, cannot extract it with pdf.js, cannot see it by removing an overlay. This is different from many free tools that only draw a black rectangle over the text; in those, anyone can select the covered text and paste it out. Try it: after redacting, open the resulting PDF and try to select the redacted region — nothing is there.

What personal information does the auto-detect find?

The auto-scan looks for: US-format Social Security Numbers (XXX-XX-XXXX), credit-card numbers (13-19 digits with Luhn checksum validation, so it doesn't mistake phone numbers or IDs for cards), phone numbers (US, UK, EU, international formats), and email addresses. You can also draw manual black boxes for anything else — names, addresses, dates of birth, account numbers, medical record numbers, license numbers.

Is the PDF uploaded to your server?

No. The whole process — reading the PDF, running text extraction, detecting PII, rasterizing pages, drawing the redaction boxes, packaging the output PDF — happens in your browser using pdf.js and pdf-lib. Nothing about your document reaches our servers or any third party. You can verify by opening DevTools → Network tab while redacting: you will see no requests uploading your PDF. This is the whole point of a client-side redactor — your confidential document (medical record, contract, court filing) never becomes someone else's problem to keep safe.

Can I redact a PDF on iPhone or Android?

Yes. Open this page in Safari on iPhone or Chrome on Android. Tap the box, choose your PDF from Files, iCloud Drive, or Google Drive. Auto-detected PII shows up on the page thumbnails; tap boxes to toggle them. Tap "Redact & download". The redacted PDF downloads to your device and can be shared to Mail, Messages, WhatsApp, or saved to Files. Works identically on iPad, Android tablets and Chromebook.

How does this compare to iLovePDF or Smallpdf redaction?

iLovePDF does not have a redaction tool at all — you have to remove sensitive info by covering it with a shape, which is not real redaction. Smallpdf offers redaction only behind their Pro plan ($9/month). Both upload your PDF to their servers to process it. This tool is free, does real rasterized redaction, and never uploads your PDF. If your document is sensitive (medical, legal, HR, financial), the difference matters.

Will the redacted PDF still be searchable?

Non-redacted pages keep their original text layer, so they remain searchable and selectable. Redacted pages become image-based (that is the whole point — the removed text is genuinely gone), so text on those pages is no longer selectable. If you need the non-redacted text on those pages to stay searchable, run the redacted PDF through our /ocr tool afterwards to add a fresh text layer excluding the black regions.

What is the difference between redacting and just deleting text?

Redaction is what you do when the reader must see that something has been removed but cannot see what it was — think court filings, FOIA responses, medical records shared with insurers, employment records shared with background-check firms. Deletion (removing text and reflowing the surrounding content) is what you do when the reader should not know anything was there at all. This tool does redaction: black rectangles remain visible where the sensitive text used to be, preserving the document's structure and audit trail.

Can I redact scanned PDFs (image-only, no text layer)?

Yes — with a caveat. Auto-detect uses text extraction, so scanned PDFs with no text layer will not have PII automatically found. But you can still switch to Draw mode and manually redact any region on any page. If you want auto-detect to work on scanned PDFs, run them through our /ocr tool first to add a text layer, then bring the result here.