Free PDF Tools for Students
Assignments, readings and scanned forms: merge, compress, convert and sign them, then ask questions about a paper
These free PDF tools for students cover the jobs that come up every term: putting an assignment together, getting a scan under an upload limit, turning a reading into an editable file and finding answers in a long paper. There is no account to create and no watermark on the files you hand in.
Recommended Tools
Merge PDF
Combine the cover page, the essay and the appendix into one PDF, dragging the files into the right order. It runs in your browser, so the files are not uploaded.
Compress PDF
Shrinks image-heavy PDFs such as scanned notes or photos, to help them fit under the size limit of a submission portal. Three levels, from light to strong; existing PDF text stays selectable, while text inside scanned images can lose detail. Files up to 4 MB, processed on our server and then deleted.
Extract PDF Pages
Save only the chapter or the pages you need from a long textbook PDF. Pages are copied without re-encoding, in your browser.
JPG to PDF
Turn phone photos of handwritten notes or a whiteboard into one PDF, on A4 or Letter pages, in portrait or landscape, with adjustable margins.
PDF to Word
Get an editable .docx of a digital PDF, normally laid out close to the original pages, with tables as positioned text boxes rather than Word tables; if that conversion fails, a second converter builds the file differently. A scan gives no editable text.
Chat with PDF
Ask questions about an article or a course reader, or ask for a summary. The assistant is told to stick to the document and cite pages; up to 500 pages, 50 messages per conversation and 4,000 characters per question.
Sign PDF
Add a drawn, typed or imported signature to a form or a declaration, in your browser. It is an image on the page, not a certified signature.
Common Use Cases
- Combine a cover page, an essay and the appendices into one file
- Get a scanned assignment under the size limit of an upload portal
- Keep only the chapters you need from a long textbook PDF
- Turn photos of handwritten notes into a single PDF
- Ask for a summary of a research paper before reading it in full
- Sign a permission form or a declaration without printing it
Before you submit an assignment
Submission portals often ask for a single PDF under a size limit. Merge the parts first, then choose Compress PDF in the "File ready" panel, so the merged file moves on without being picked again.
Compression mostly shrinks images: for a text-only PDF, the chosen level may not make the file any smaller, and the tool then says the file is already optimized and offers no download. Above 4 MB, the file is still sent to the server first, and if the server refuses it, a light optimization in your browser takes over, which does not reduce images. A PDF that asks for a password cannot be opened, so unlock it first if you know the password.
Reading and research
Chat with PDF is instructed to answer from the document only and to cite page numbers when it can, which makes each answer easier to check against the source. It answers in the language of your question and offers a summary button and suggested questions.
For a book of more than about 280,000 characters (70,000 in Chinese, Japanese or Korean), only the pages that fit in the first 240,000 (60,000 in those languages) are read, so the last chapters are left out: extract the chapters you need first. Since ProPDF has no OCR, the chat cannot read scanned pages, and PDF to Word keeps them as images with no editable text. The chat keeps the document text and the conversation in your tab, and our Paris server keeps neither once it has answered.
Forms and signatures
On a PDF form, Edit PDF can add X marks and change text that is already on the page, but it does not fill the form fields or add text in an empty area. Rewritten text can only use Latin letters with common Western European accents. The tool sends a PDF of up to 4 MB in full to our server when it opens and after each change; a larger PDF is not sent, and only signatures can be added to it. Sign PDF stays in your browser and places your signature as an image on the page.
If your school asks for a certified electronic signature, use the service it names: a visual signature carries no certificate or timestamp.