Smallpdf Pro vs ProPDF: Which Tasks Need a Paid Plan?
Smallpdf Pro is one of the paid plans Smallpdf lists on its pricing page, next to Team and Business. ProPDF has no paid plan at all: its 21 PDF tools are free, with no account and no subscription. Below, you can check each item Smallpdf lists for Pro against what ProPDF actually does.
The Smallpdf facts on this page come from its pricing, Pro and home pages as read in September 2026, and its features may change. The ProPDF facts describe the tools as they work today, limits included.
| Feature | ProPDF | Smallpdf |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, no subscription | A Free plan, then Pro, Team and Business subscriptions billed yearly or monthly |
| Free trial | Not needed: nothing is locked | 7 days; if you cancel, the account returns to Free |
| Downloads and daily use | No account needed and no daily quota; the chat allows 50 messages per conversation, answers included | Free lists "Limited document downloads"; Pro lifts that limit |
| Number of tools | 21 | 30+ document management tools |
| Edit existing text | Yes, rewritten in Helvetica, Times or Courier | "Edit Text" listed under Pro |
| OCR for scans | No | PDF OCR, with OCR listed under Pro |
| Compression | Three levels, files up to 4 MB | "Strong Compression" listed under Pro |
| AI assistant | Chat with PDF: questions and summaries | AI-powered tools, with full access listed under Pro |
| Office formats | Word only, to and from PDF | Word, Excel and PowerPoint, to and from PDF |
| Signature | Visual signature only | Signature requests through Sign.com, with a certificate of completion |
| Form filling | No | PDF Form Filler |
| Shapes and freehand | No | Edit PDF adds shapes and freehand annotations |
| Desktop and mobile apps | No | Windows App and Smallpdf Mobile App |
| Where it runs | 13 tools run in your browser; the other 8 use our server in Paris, which deletes the file after processing; the chat keeps the text and the conversation in your tab, not on the server | Online tools, plus the Windows and mobile apps |
What Smallpdf Offers
- Lists PDF OCR to make text in scans searchable
- Converts Word, Excel and PowerPoint files to and from PDF
- Requests signatures through Sign.com, with activity tracking and a certificate of completion
- Offers a Windows App and the Smallpdf Mobile App
- Its editor adds shapes, images and freehand annotations, and its annotator can highlight
- Lists crop, PDF/A conversion, form filling, flattening and share links
- Offers a 7-day free trial, according to its pricing page
Smallpdf: Limits and Conditions
- Text editing and OCR are listed under Pro, not Free
- The Free plan lists limited document downloads and limited mobile app access
- A free Sign.com account is limited to 2 documents a month
- Strong Compression and full access to the AI-powered tools are Pro items
- Pro, Team and Business are paid subscriptions, billed yearly or monthly
What Smallpdf Pro includes, according to Smallpdf
Smallpdf's Pro page sums the plan up as bringing "every PDF tool you need into one professional workspace, from compressing and converting to editing, signing, and protecting your documents."
On the pricing page, Pro is presented as "Everything in Free, plus:" the extras below. The list is lightly paraphrased from Smallpdf's own wording.
- Full access to all 30+ tools
- Document downloads without the Free plan's limit
- Edit Text, OCR, and more
- Strong Compression
- Full access to AI-powered tools
- Mobile app access without the Free plan's limit
- A Sign.com Premium subscription, where Free gives a Sign.com account limited to 2 documents a month
Pro needs you can meet for free in ProPDF
Several items on that list have a free counterpart in ProPDF. Each one has limits you should know before you rely on it.
- Text editing: Edit PDF changes existing text, and the new wording uses Helvetica, Times or Courier. Rewritten text can use Latin letters with common Western European accents, the euro sign and curly quotation marks: other characters, such as Cyrillic letters, come out as a dot. It cannot add a text box in an empty area. The old line is removed from the page letter by letter, keeping the background; text editing works on digital PDFs up to 4 MB. 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.
- Compression: Compress a PDF has three levels, from light to strong. Image-heavy files shrink the most, real text stays sharp and selectable, and the result is never larger than your original.
- AI: Chat with PDF answers questions about a text PDF and writes summaries, for documents up to 500 pages and 50 messages per conversation. Past about 280,000 characters of text (70,000 in Chinese, Japanese or Korean), only the pages that fit in the first 240,000 (60,000 in those languages) are read.
- Downloads and file size: no account and no daily quota. Browser tools have no file size cap beyond your device's memory, and server tools accept files up to 4 MB.
- Word conversions: PDF to Word creates an editable .docx laid out close to the original pages, and Word to PDF converts with LibreOffice.
- Signing and protecting your own files: Sign PDF places a drawn, typed or imported signature, and Protect PDF adds AES-256 encryption with a password to open the file.
Pro needs ProPDF does not cover
These are the reasons to keep Smallpdf Pro or another paid tool. ProPDF has no equivalent for any of them.
- OCR: ProPDF cannot turn a scan into text. Its text tools, from editing to chat, need a PDF with real text.
- PDF to Excel or PowerPoint, and back: ProPDF has no such conversion.
- Signature requests with a certificate of completion: ProPDF cannot send a document for others to sign. Its signatures are visual only, with no certificate, timestamp or audit trail.
- Mobile and Windows apps: ProPDF has neither and is used in a web browser only.
- Form filling: ProPDF has no form filler. On a form, Edit PDF can tick boxes with an X and place a signature, but it cannot fill the fields or add text in an empty area.
- Shapes and freehand annotations: the ProPDF editor has no shapes, freehand drawing or highlighting.
- Also missing: crop, PDF/A conversion, flattening and share links.
Trial and billing on Smallpdf
Smallpdf offers a free trial under the label "Try 7 Days Free". Its FAQ states that if you cancel the trial, your account is downgraded to the Free plan when the 7-day period expires.
ProPDF has no trial because there is nothing to unlock: the same 21 tools are open to everyone, and they add no watermark to your files.
Which One to Choose
Smallpdf Pro makes sense when you need OCR, Excel or PowerPoint conversion, signature requests or an app on Windows or a phone, since Smallpdf lists all of them and ProPDF has none. If your Pro use comes down to editing text, compressing, converting Word files or asking questions about a document, ProPDF does those tasks for free, with no account, within the limits described above.