Most redaction tools paint a black box over text. The words are still in the file — searchable, copyable, recoverable. We built FreePDFRedaction to fix that.
A large share of “redacted” documents leak the very information they were meant to hide. Draw a black rectangle in most PDF editors and the underlying text stays in the content stream, where anyone can select it, copy it, or pull it out with a one-line script. The document looks safe. It isn’t.
We wanted a tool that does the one thing redaction is supposed to do — permanently remove the sensitive content — without asking you to trust us with your files afterwards. So the redactor strips text directly from the PDF content stream, destroys pixels on scanned pages, and processes everything in memory. Your file is discarded within seconds.
It’s free for everyday use because checking whether your document is actually safe shouldn’t sit behind a paywall.
Text objects are removed from the PDF content stream, and on scanned pages the original pixels are destroyed and the image replaced. There is nothing underneath to recover.
Scanned and photographed pages are read with OCR to locate names and PII — including pages photographed at an angle — before anything is removed.
A page can have perfectly good text and still hide a Social Security number inside a scanned insert. We check those images even when the page looks digital.
Documents are processed in memory and discarded within seconds. We don't retain them, log their contents, or train on them.
Legal teams preparing filings and discovery, healthcare staff handling patient records, government offices answering records requests, finance and accounting teams sharing statements — and anyone who needs to send a document without leaking what’s inside it.
Run by a small independent team. [Add who you are and where you’re based — for a tool that handles personal data, saying nothing about yourselves costs you trust.]
Select the page, copy it, and paste it into a text editor. If the text is still there, it was never removed.