An iLovePDF alternative that never uploads your files

iLovePDF is the reference product in this category, and any honest comparison has to start there. It is fast, broad, translated into dozens of languages, and it works on any device without thinking about it.

This page is not an argument that it is bad. It is an argument that for a subset of documents, the architecture matters more than the feature list — and that the difference is easy to verify rather than something you have to take on faith.

What iLovePDF does better

Being direct about this is more useful than a comparison table of tick marks.

• Breadth of conversions. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, and several image formats, in both directions. PDF Kept does not do these.
• OCR. Turning a scan into searchable text is a genuinely heavy operation, and server-side is the natural place for it.
• Repair and redaction. Both exist there and not here.
• Localisation. Dozens of interface languages.
• Maturity. Years of edge-case handling across every browser and file variant.

If your task is “convert a Word document to PDF”, iLovePDF is the correct answer and this site is not.

Where the two differ

The substantive difference is not features. It is where the document goes.

	iLovePDF	PDF Kept
Where files are processed	Their servers	Your browser
Upload required	Yes, for every task	No
Account	Optional; required for some features	Not offered
Task or file limits	Free tier limits; paid tiers raise them	No task counter or daily quota; 30 files and 500 MB per file, to keep the browser responsive
Offline after first load	No	Yes, once the page is cached
Format conversions (Word, Excel, PPT)	Yes	No
OCR, repair, redaction	Yes	No
Interface languages	Dozens	English

The first four rows are the trade. You give up conversion breadth and localisation; you get the document staying where it is.

Why the processing location matters

When a tool processes on a server, the file must be transmitted, stored for at least the duration of the work, and then deleted according to whatever policy the operator applies. Every established service has a deletion policy, and iLovePDF publishes one.

The point is not that these policies are dishonest. It is that a policy is a promise about someone else’s machine, while local processing removes the machine from the picture.

For a restaurant menu, none of it matters. For a signed lease, a medical letter, or a client’s financial statement, the difference is concrete: one path transmits the document, the other cannot.

How to check either product yourself

This takes about thirty seconds and does not depend on trusting a comparison page — including this one.

1. Open the tool in question.
2. Press F12 and switch to the Network tab. Tick Preserve log.
3. Run the operation on a PDF.
4. Look at the requests.

If the document was uploaded, a request will carry it — usually a POST whose size matches your file. If processing was local, the requests are the page’s own scripts and fonts, and nothing resembles your document’s size.

Run that test on this site and on iLovePDF and the architectural difference stops being a marketing claim.

What you give up here

Stated plainly, so nobody is surprised:

• No Word, Excel or PowerPoint conversion. Not offered, and not planned as a browser-only feature.
• No OCR. Text extraction from scans needs heavier processing than a tab should carry.
• No redaction. Deleting a page is not the same thing, and this site says so in its own documentation.
• English only.
• A 30-file, 500 MB-per-file ceiling per operation. Both are guard rails rather than a quota: there is nothing to buy to raise them, and the real ceiling is your browser’s memory. A server-side service can accept far larger files.

When to choose which

Choose iLovePDF when you need a conversion it supports, when the document is not sensitive, when you are on a locked-down device where you cannot install anything and the file is large, or when you need an interface language other than English.

Choose PDF Kept when the task is one of the common ones — merging, splitting, compressing, converting images, rotating, numbering pages, signing — and the document is one you would rather not hand to a third party.

Use both if that is what works. There is no loyalty requirement, and the two are complementary rather than mutually exclusive.

Trademarks and accuracy

iLovePDF is a trademark of its owner, used here only to identify the product being compared. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by iLovePDF.

Product details change. Free-tier limits, feature lists and prices on this page reflect what was observable when it was written; verify anything that matters against iLovePDF’s own site before relying on it. Nothing here is intended as a claim about their internal practices — only about the architectural difference, which is visible in the network traffic of any tool you use.