Redact PDF
Permanently black out sensitive text and images in your PDF. The hidden content is truly removed — not just covered. Free and secure.
Drop your PDF here
or click to browse — up to 10 MB free
Real redaction, not fake black boxes
Most tools just draw a rectangle on top of your text — the words are still there underneath. Ours removes them for good.
True redaction
The area you select is rasterized and the pixels are burned black, so the underlying text and images are permanently destroyed — impossible to copy or recover.
Private & secure
Files travel over an encrypted connection, are scanned for malware, and auto-delete from our servers within 1 hour.
Draw anywhere
Drag a box over any name, number, signature or image on any page. Add as many redaction areas as you need.
Nothing recoverable
Redacted content cannot be revealed with copy-paste, Ctrl+A, or a PDF editor — because it no longer exists in the file.
Fast & in-browser
Mark up your document right in the browser and download the redacted file. Nothing to install.
Free to use
There is no watermark. The free plan covers files up to 10 MB; upgrade for larger files or more volume.
How to redact a PDF in 3 steps
Draw boxes, redact, download.
Upload your PDF
Drag & drop or pick the PDF with the sensitive content.
Draw over the secrets
Drag a black box over every name, number or image you want gone.
Download
Click redact and download a PDF with the content permanently removed.
When you need to redact a PDF
Anywhere sensitive information must be shared safely — with the private parts truly gone.
At work
- Hide client names and figures in contracts before sharing.
- Remove salaries and personal data from HR documents.
- Black out account numbers on invoices and statements.
- Redact confidential clauses before sending to third parties.
Personal
- Cover your address and ID number on scanned documents.
- Remove card and bank details from receipts and statements.
- Hide signatures before posting a document online.
- Black out private info on forms before printing or emailing.
What actually happens when you redact
What gets removed from the file, and what stays.
Why a black box alone isn't real redaction
Many free tools just draw an opaque rectangle over content — the text underneath is completely intact and can be recovered by selecting it, copying it, or opening the PDF in an editor. This is a well-documented category of real-world data leaks.
What "burning" the pixels actually means
We rasterize the redacted region — converting it into a flat image and overwriting the actual pixel data with black — rather than layering a shape on top. There's no underlying text object left to extract; the original content is genuinely gone from that area.
Can redacted text still be found with search?
No. Because the underlying text object is destroyed, not hidden, a text search (Ctrl+F) finds nothing where the redaction was — there's no text left to match, which is exactly the point.
Redacting text vs. images vs. both
The same rasterize-and-burn approach works whether you're redacting a paragraph of text, a photo, a signature, or any other visual element on the page — the tool doesn't distinguish between content types when applying the redaction.
Can a redaction be undone?
Not from the redacted file itself, by design — that's the whole point of true redaction. If you need the original content back, you'd need your original, pre-redaction copy of the document.
Does redaction also clean the document metadata?
Redaction handles the visible page content specifically. Document metadata — author name, creation software, revision history — is a separate layer and isn't automatically stripped by redacting page content, so review your document's properties separately if metadata is also a concern.
Frequently asked questions
Redact PDF online — permanently remove sensitive content
Our Redact PDF tool permanently removes confidential text and images from any PDF. Unlike tools that draw a black rectangle on top of the content, we rasterize each redacted area and burn the pixels black — so the original words and images are genuinely destroyed and cannot be recovered by copying the text, selecting all, or opening the file in a PDF editor.
Upload your PDF, drag a box over every piece of sensitive information — names, account numbers, signatures, faces or entire paragraphs — and download the redacted file. You can add unlimited redaction areas across every page. Pages you don't touch stay perfectly intact and searchable.
Why 'true' redaction matters
Many free redaction tools only hide content visually. The black box sits on top of the text, but anyone can select, copy, or extract the hidden words underneath — a serious data-leak risk for contracts, medical records and IDs. Our tool eliminates that risk by removing the underlying content entirely. Files are transferred over a secure encrypted connection, scanned for malware, and automatically deleted from our servers within 1 hour. There is no watermark.
Redact your PDF
Upload your file, black out what's sensitive, and download a truly safe document — free and secure.