Best for, at a glance
The short answer
If you need a PDF tool occasionally and do not mind uploading the file, PDF24 is the best free option of the three. It has no paid tier, no daily limit and no account requirement. It is funded by ads.
If you will pay, iLovePDF Premium costs about half as much as Smallpdf Pro on either monthly or annual billing, and unlocks OCR and batch processing. Smallpdf’s free tier was the most restrictive in our tests.
If the file is private, or it is a scan you need as editable text, none of the three free versions is a good fit. That is the gap Lyonite is built for: the file stays on your device and English OCR is free. It has fewer tools than any of the three.
Price, limits and privacy at a glance
| Question | Smallpdf | iLovePDF | PDF24 | Lyonite (ours) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paid plan, billed monthly | Pro: CA$16 a month | Premium: CA$10 a month | None — funded by ads | None |
| Paid plan, billed yearly | CA$144 a year (CA$12 a month) | CA$72 a year (CA$6 a month) | — | — |
| Free tier | Daily download limit. Observed: conversion ran, download refused with a ~7 hour wait | “Limited document processing.” Observed: PDF to Word takes one file per task | “Free of charge and without any restrictions.” Observed: nine files in one batch | Every tool, no daily limit, no account |
| OCR for scans in PDF to Word, free | No — “Advanced with OCR” is Pro | No — OCR is Premium | Not in PDF to Word; separate OCR tool (not tested) | Yes, English, on your device |
| Where your file goes | Uploaded; processed in the EU, per Smallpdf | Uploaded; region not stated on the free plan | Uploaded to EU data centres; desktop app keeps files local | Not uploaded — processed in your browser |
| How long they say they keep it | Deleted after one hour | A maximum of two hours | Deleted after one hour | Never received |
Prices are the ones shown to a visitor in Canada on the date above, in Canadian dollars, with tax as each site displays it. Retention and server statements are each company’s own; I did not verify deletion.
What came back from PDF to Word
PDF to Word is where the free tiers differ most, and where a bad result costs you the most time. I ran twelve PDFs through each converter on its default free setting and checked every Word file twice: by counting how many of the source’s words are in it, and by rendering every page and looking.
The files are public documents chosen to be difficult: a two-column paper, a court opinion with footnotes, ruled financial tables, a filled-in tax form, a page stored sideways, dark slides, Arabic and Chinese, and three scans with no text layer.
| Test file | Lyonite (ours) | iLovePDF | PDF24 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two-column research paperarXiv 1706.03762v7, pages 1–3 | 99% | 98% | 99% |
| Court opinion with footnotesUS Supreme Court, 22-451, pages 1–4 | 98% | 96% | 100% |
| Report with charts and tablesUS Census P60-280, pages 5, 6 and 27 | 99% | 100% | 100% |
| Ruled financial tablesFederal Reserve H.4.1 release, pages 1–3 | 98% | 98% | 98% |
| Filled-in formIRS Form W-9 page 1, fields filled with test values | 99% | 98% | 100% |
| Page stored sidewaysarXiv pages 1–3 with page 2 rotated 90° | 99% | 98% | 86% |
| Slide deck, dark backgroundTesla Q2 2024 update, slides 3–6 | 99% | 95% | 99% |
| Arabic, right to leftUN General Assembly A/RES/78/1 (Arabic), pages 1–2 | 78% | 72% | 72% |
| ChineseUN General Assembly A/RES/78/1 (Chinese), pages 1–2 | 94% | 73% | 78% |
| Clean scan, 300 dpiCourt opinion pages 2–3 rendered to a 300 dpi greyscale image, no text layer | 97% | 0% — picture only | 0% — picture only |
| Skewed, noisy two-column scanPLOS ONE paper pages 1–2 at 150 dpi, rotated 1.8°, noise, JPEG quality 45 | 94% | 0% — picture only | 0% — picture only |
| Typewritten archive scanERIC ED012345 (1967) pages 5–7, original OCR layer removed | 96% | 0% — picture only | 0% — picture only |
- Scans: iLovePDF and PDF24 returned all three scans as pictures, with 0% of their words as text. iLovePDF says so first: its free tier offers “Continue without OCR”, and OCR is Premium. PDF24 has a separate OCR tool, which I did not test here. Lyonite’s on-device OCR recovered 94–97% of the words.
- Ordinary documents: on the paper, the court opinion and the tables, all three kept 96–100% of the words. Differences were in layout, not text.
- The filled-in form: Lyonite and PDF24 kept all four values typed into the form’s fields. iLovePDF’s Word file was missing two of them as text, both in narrow boxes.
- Chinese: Lyonite kept 94% of the words, PDF24 78%, iLovePDF 73%.
- The sideways page: PDF24 kept 86% of the words. The others kept 98–99%.
- Clickable links: iLovePDF carried the most links into Word. Lyonite keeps web links, and internal links (contents, figure and citation references) when the page they point to is in the file. These excerpts cut most of those targets out.
Counting words does not show whether a document looks right. Rendered page by page, iLovePDF and PDF24 both reproduced the paper’s title page with its centred author grid. Lyonite turned part of that grid into a list. On the ruled Federal Reserve table and the filled-in form, Lyonite and iLovePDF were close to the original, and PDF24 split the table and moved the form’s fields out of place.
Smallpdf ran the conversion, then refused the free download. It showed an upgrade prompt and a countdown of about seven hours. I did not buy an account, so Smallpdf has no row in the results. I don’t know whether earlier use on the same connection counted against its limit. In August, its free tier allowed two downloads every twelve hours.
Lyonite’s numbers are from the version published on 3 October 2026, after fixes made because of this test. Before that, forms came out as an empty picture of the form with the labels listed below it, dark slides lost their text against white boxes, two-column papers had their columns merged line by line, and one 3 MB tax guide became an 83 MB Word file. Those were the results of the earlier version, and they were worse than both competitors on forms and slides.
Compression: smaller, but at what cost
From the compression report, measured on 27–30 August 2026 on public PDFs. iLovePDF and Smallpdf made files smaller than PDF24 did, and in every tagged file they did it by deleting all of the accessibility tags that screen readers use. PDF24 and Lyonite kept every tag. Smallpdf’s free tier let me measure two of the five files.
| Compressor | Files measured | Accessibility tags | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smallpdf | 2 of 5 (free limit) | Deleted all of them in both tagged files | Also dropped the budget file’s form field. |
| iLovePDF | 5 of 5 | Deleted all of them in all four tagged files | Largest savings of the three on three of five documents. |
| PDF24 | 5 of 5 | Kept every tag | Smallest savings; made one file 1% larger. |
| Lyonite (ours) | 5 of 5 | Kept every tag | Usually smaller output than PDF24 and larger than iLovePDF. |
Removing metadata
Of the three, only PDF24 offers a dedicated metadata remover, which I tested in the metadata removers report on 14 August 2026. It says it will “delete all metadata”. It cleared the document properties and left the GPS coordinates in an embedded photo, the embedded script, the attachment and the document ID.
Which one should you use?
- Occasional free use, nothing sensitive: PDF24.
- Paying for a full suite with e-signing and editing: iLovePDF Premium costs less than Smallpdf Pro. Smallpdf’s editor and e-signature bundle may matter to you. I did not test them.
- Scans you need to edit, without paying: Lyonite, or PDF24’s separate OCR tool followed by its converter.
- Confidential files: a tool that does not upload them. Lyonite runs in the browser; PDF24 also offers a desktop app.
- Anything with accessibility tags (government, legal, education): do not compress it with iLovePDF or Smallpdf.
How this was measured
All three services were used on 3 October 2026 through their public web pages, signed out, on their default settings. No account was created and nothing was paid for. The twelve test files are public documents, or pages of them, and are listed with their sources in the table. The three scans were made by rendering pages of public documents to images, so the correct text is known word for word.
Word counts compare the words in each Word file with the words in the source. For digital PDFs the source words come from pdftotext. For scans they come from the text the scan was made from. Every Word file was also rendered with LibreOffice and checked page by page. LibreOffice is not Microsoft Word, and a document can look different in Word.
Prices, limits and retention statements were read from each company’s own pages the same day. They change, and the date is part of the claim.
What this does not show
Twelve files are enough to show differences, not to rank every document you might have. Arabic scores are approximate: the word counting splits Arabic letters joined by stretching characters differently from the source text. I did not test editing, e-signing, conversions other than PDF to Word, or any paid tier. Deletion promises are reported as stated, not verified.
Questions
- Is Smallpdf free?
- Smallpdf has a free tier with a daily download limit. On 3 October 2026 it converted a PDF to Word and then refused the download, showing an upgrade prompt and a wait of about seven hours. Smallpdf Pro removes the limit.
- Which is cheaper, Smallpdf or iLovePDF?
- iLovePDF. On 3 October 2026, iLovePDF Premium was CA$10 a month or CA$72 a year, and Smallpdf Pro was CA$16 a month or CA$144 a year, as shown to a visitor in Canada.
- Is PDF24 really free?
- Yes. PDF24 has no paid plan for its online tools and says they are free without restrictions. It is funded by advertising. In our test it converted nine files in one batch with no account.
- Do Smallpdf, iLovePDF and PDF24 keep my files?
- All three upload your file to their servers. Smallpdf and PDF24 say files are deleted after one hour; iLovePDF says it keeps them for a maximum of two hours. These are the companies’ own statements, not something this test verified.
- Can I convert a scanned PDF to Word for free?
- Not with the free PDF-to-Word converters of iLovePDF or Smallpdf, where OCR is a paid feature. PDF24’s converter returned our scans as pictures; it has a separate OCR tool. Lyonite reads English scans on your device for free and recovered 94–97% of the words on our three test scans.
- Which PDF tool is best for privacy?
- One that never uploads the file. Smallpdf, iLovePDF and PDF24’s online tools all upload it. PDF24’s desktop app and Lyonite, which runs in your browser, do not.
Check this yourself. If I got it wrong, tell me.
Every number here came from files you can download and a checker you can run, so you do not have to take my word for any of it — clone the corpus and get your own result.
If it disagrees with mine, or if you build one of the tools named here and I measured it unfairly, out of date, or with a setting you would not have used, send it to hello@lyonite.com.
I reply within 48 hours. If you are right, the page is corrected with the date on it and your correction credited, and the old number stays visible so the change is legible. If a tool has since been fixed, that is the update I most want to publish. Nothing here is worth defending past the point it stops being true.