TL;DR: Upload a PDF, draw black-out rectangles over the areas to hide, and download the redacted file — content is burnt in, not just overlaid.
Redact PDF online for free — permanently black out sensitive information including names, addresses, SSNs, and confidential text. WARNING: Redaction is irreversible.
Redact PDF is part of PrivaTools — a free, open-source alternative to iLovePDF, Smallpdf, and Adobe. Server-side tools process your file in an isolated container and discard it immediately; many tools never upload at all and run entirely in your browser.
Yes. The underlying text glyphs and image pixels under each redaction rectangle are destroyed before the new PDF is written. The original bytes are not preserved in the file. No forensic tool can recover them — there is nothing left to recover.
Yes. Use the search-and-redact mode to type a phrase (case-sensitive optional) and the tool marks every occurrence across the whole document. Review the matches, then apply the redactions in one batch.
Drawing a black annotation rectangle (like in Acrobat's Comment tool) covers the text visually but the text is still under the rectangle — anyone can move or delete the annotation and recover the secret. True redaction permanently removes the text and image data and rewrites the file. PrivaTools uses true redaction, not annotation.
Yes. Only the content under the redaction rectangles is destroyed. Text outside the rectangles, along with bookmarks, hyperlinks, and the text-search layer, are preserved intact.
By default the rectangles destroy on-page text and images. Author name, title, software, and other XMP/Info metadata are NOT automatically stripped — use the Strip Metadata tool afterward (or use Smart Redact which redacts both). For maximum safety: redact, then strip metadata, then sanitize.
Yes. The original and the redacted output are held in temp memory only and unlinked immediately after the response. The redaction logic is open source under MIT — you can read every line on GitHub or self-host the tool entirely. No third-party API is involved, no log captures content.
See how PrivaTools compares to iLovePDF, Smallpdf, Adobe Acrobat, and other free PDF tools.