Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Notion VS LightUtils

Compare Notion VS LightUtils and see what are their differences

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Notion logo Notion

All-in-one workspace. One tool for your whole team. Write, plan, and get organized.

LightUtils logo LightUtils

50 tools that run inside your browser and upload nothing. Not a promise: the page is blocked from making network requests at all. Compress and merge PDFs, reorder pages, trim video, convert images, fix CSV files Excel opens as garbled Thai.
  • Notion Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-12
  • LightUtils Landing page
    Landing page //
    2026-08-02

LightUtils is 50 file and text tools that run entirely inside your browser. Nothing is uploaded, and that is enforced rather than promised: every page is served with a Content-Security-Policy of connect-src 'none', which means the browser itself refuses to let the page make a network request.

That one decision changes what the tools are for. A scanned contract, a payslip, a customer list โ€” the documents most worth working on are the ones nobody should be dropping on a stranger's server. Here they never leave the machine, so there is also no queue, no upload wait and no file size limit imposed by one.

What is in it

  • PDF (9) โ€” merge, split, reorder pages by dragging, compress, watermark, password-protect, extract images, combine any files into one PDF. Encrypted PDFs that open without a prompt are handled, which most free tools refuse.
  • Video and audio (7) โ€” compress, trim without re-encoding, video to GIF, remove or extract audio, reduce background noise, convert subtitles.
  • Images (3) โ€” convert and compress, crop, remove a plain background.
  • Data (5) โ€” fix CSV files that Excel opens as garbled Thai, CSV to real Excel, mask personal data in a CSV, JSON and XML both ways, JSON formatter.
  • Accessibility (5) โ€” WCAG contrast checker, colour blindness checker, readability checker that handles Thai, PDF accessibility checker, and a WCAG 2.3.1 flashing content checker that never plays the video back at you.
  • Random and prize draws (3) โ€” a spinning wheel, a name picker, a number generator. Every draw is seeded, so a prize draw can be verified by the people it affects instead of taken on trust.
  • Text and developer tools (18) โ€” diff, word count, case, sort, encrypt, ciphers, Enigma, morse, QR, passwords, UUID, hashes, Base64, timestamps, number bases.

Free forever. No account, no email, no watermark, no daily limit. Fully bilingual in English and Thai, with Thai written as Thai rather than translated.

Notion

Website
notion.com
$ Details
-
Platforms
-
Release Date
-
Startup details
Country
United States

LightUtils

Pricing URL
-
$ Details
free
Platforms
Web
Release Date
2026 July
Startup details
Country
Thailand
State
Samut Prakan
Founder(s)
Limpornchai Limkittikul
Employees
1 - 9

Notion features and specs

  • All-in-One Workspace
    Notion combines note-taking, task management, databases, calendars, and collaboration features in a single platform, reducing the need for multiple tools.
  • Highly Customizable
    Users can tailor Notion to fit their specific workflow with customizable templates, pages, and databases, making it versatile for various use cases.
  • Collaboration Features
    Notion offers seamless collaboration with real-time editing, comments, mentions, and shared workspaces, enhancing teamwork and productivity.
  • Cross-Platform Availability
    Notion is available on multiple platforms, including web, desktop, and mobile, providing flexibility and accessibility from anywhere.
  • Integration Capability
    Notion supports integrations with various third-party applications like Google Drive, Slack, and Trello, allowing for a more interconnected workflow.

Possible disadvantages of Notion

  • Learning Curve
    Due to its extensive features and customization options, new users might find Notion challenging to learn and navigate initially.
  • Performance Issues
    Some users report that Notion can become slow or experience lag, especially with large databases and complex pages.
  • Offline Limitations
    While Notion offers some offline capabilities, its functionality is significantly reduced without an internet connection, which can be inconvenient for some users.
  • Pricing for Teams
    Though Notion offers a free version, its premium plans can be expensive for larger teams, which may be a constraint for startups or small businesses.
  • Privacy Concerns
    As with any cloud-based service, there are potential privacy and data security concerns, especially for users handling sensitive information.

LightUtils features and specs

  • File upload
    Never. Enforced by connect-src 'none' in the Content-Security-Policy, not by policy text
  • Number of Tools
    50
  • Price
    Free forever. No paid tier exists
  • Account Required
    No. There is no login, because there is no server
  • Daily limits
    None
  • Watermark
    Never
  • File Size Limit
    100 MB for PDF, 500 MB for video. Set by your own memory, not by an upload
  • Batch Processing
    Yes, up to 20 PDFs at once, output as a ZIP
  • Languages
    English and Thai, fully separate content rather than machine translation
  • Encrypted PDF support
    Yes. Files that open without a password prompt are read and written normally
  • Accessibility Tools
    5 - WCAG contrast, colour blindness, PDF accessibility, readability, WCAG 2.3.1 flashing content
  • Cookies
    None on any tool. A consent banner appears only because ads may be added later
  • Analytics
    No third-party analytics, no tracking scripts
  • Open Source
    No. Source is private
  • Runtime dependencies
    Zero. No framework, no library, no WebAssembly
  • Works Offline
    No. A service worker would require loosening the security policy

Notion videos

The Most Powerful Productivity App I Use - Notion

More videos:

  • Review - I switched to Notion for a week... Here's what happened!
  • Review - Notion is Truly an All-in-One Productivity Tool (App Review)

LightUtils videos

No LightUtils videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Notion and LightUtils)
Productivity
100 100%
0% 0
Image Editing
0 0%
100% 100
Project Management
100 100%
0% 0
PDF Tools
0 0%
100% 100

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing Notion and LightUtils.

What makes your product unique?

LightUtils's answer:

The no-upload promise is enforced by the browser, not by our word for it.

Every page is served with a Content-Security-Policy containing connect-src 'none'. That directive means the browser refuses to let the page make any network request. Our own code could not send your file anywhere if it tried, and anyone can check it in about ten seconds:

  1. Open the network tab
  2. Use any tool on the site
  3. Watch nothing leave

Almost every "private, client-side" tool on the web is a claim in a marketing paragraph. This one is a header you can read.

Two things follow from it. There is nothing to upload, so no queue, no round trip, and no file size limit that exists only because someone is paying for bandwidth. And there is no account, because there is no server to hold one.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

LightUtils's answer:

Because the documents most worth working on are the ones you should not hand to a stranger's server: a signed contract, a payslip, a bank statement, a customer list. On Smallpdf or iLovePDF those files are uploaded, processed remotely, and deleted on a schedule you have to trust. Here they never leave the machine.

LightUtils Typical online tool
Your file Never leaves the browser Uploaded to a server
Daily limit None Usually 2 free tasks
Watermark Never Common on free tiers
Account None, ever Required past the free tier
Upload wait None Scales with your file

Beyond that:

  • Encrypted PDFs work. Files that open without a password prompt are handled. Most free tools refuse them, which quietly excludes bank statements, invoices and government forms.
  • Five accessibility checkers almost nothing free offers: WCAG contrast, colour blindness, PDF accessibility, readability, and WCAG 2.3.1 flashing content.
  • Genuinely bilingual. The Thai is written as Thai, not machine-translated, and Thai-specific problems are solved: CSV files that Excel opens as garbled Thai, and a readability checker that segments Thai words, which have no spaces between them.

How would you describe the primary audience of your product?

LightUtils's answer:

Two groups, and the second is the reason the site exists.

Anyone with a file and a task. Compress a PDF to fit an email limit, merge scans, trim a video, crop an image. They arrive from a search for that exact task and want it done in one screen.

People who are not allowed to upload the file. Lawyers, accountants, HR staff, clinics, and anyone working under Thailand's PDPA or the GDPR, where sending a document containing personal data to a third-party processor needs a legal basis rather than a convenience. For them "runs in your browser" is not a feature, it is the only way the task is permitted at all.

Geographically it is built for Thailand and the English-speaking world equally, which is unusual: most tool sites are English with a machine-translated Thai page bolted on.

What's the story behind your product?

LightUtils's answer:

It started with a CSV file that Excel kept opening as garbled Thai. The fix is well known to developers and invisible to everybody else, and every free tool offering it wanted the file uploaded first. Sending a customer export to an unknown server to correct a text encoding is an absurd trade, and it is the trade almost every online tool asks for.

So the first tool was written to run in the browser. Then the harder question: how do you prove it? A promise in a privacy policy proves nothing. connect-src 'none' does, because the browser enforces it and anyone can read the header.

Once that constraint was fixed, the rest followed from it. No accounts, no server, no framework, no runtime dependencies. Fifty tools later the constraint has never been relaxed, and every claim on the site is checked by an automated test before it can ship, including the security header itself.

Built and maintained by CODENIVERSE, a software studio in Thailand.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

LightUtils's answer:

Deliberately almost none.

  • Hand-written HTML, CSS and ES modules. No React, no framework, no bundler, no build step for the JavaScript.
  • Zero runtime dependencies. The package manifest lists none at all. The only dev dependency is a property-testing library.
  • Browser platform APIs do the work โ€” WebCodecs for video and audio, WebCrypto for encryption and hashing, Canvas and OffscreenCanvas for images, Web Workers, and Intl.Segmenter for Thai word segmentation.
  • No WebAssembly, by decision. It would have meant megabytes of download and a looser security policy.
  • Written from the specifications, not pulled in as libraries โ€” the PDF reader, PDF writer, PDF decryptor, ZIP writer, XLSX writer and MP4 remuxer are all ours. That is what keeps a tool page under 100 KB.
  • Static assets on Cloudflare Workers. There is no application server.

Who are some of the biggest customers of your product?

LightUtils's answer:

None, and it would be easy to invent some.

LightUtils has no accounts, collects no personal data and sets no analytics cookies, so we genuinely do not know who uses it โ€” there is nothing on the site capable of telling us. That is the same decision as everything else here, and naming customers we cannot verify would undercut the one thing the product is for.

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Notion and LightUtils

Notion Reviews

  1. jk22
    ยท consultant at GFI ยท
    Notion has helped in documenting our business

    It's been very very helpful to streamline different people on our team, especially remote workers to help them understand what's going on in our business without 100s of meetings.

    ๐Ÿ‘ Pros:    Ui is very attractive|Easy to use|Great for collaboration|Good customer service|Free to use
    ๐Ÿ‘Ž Cons:    Steep learning curve
  2. Ramesh Kumar
    ยท Product Manager at Aerial ยท
    Extremely helpful- made life easier

    My remote-first start-up has eliminated more than 200+ hours of meetings and 1000s of mismanaged documents because our entire communication happens through Notion.

    ๐Ÿ‘ Pros:    Clean ui|File sharing|Modular
    ๐Ÿ‘Ž Cons:    Learning curve
  3. Boyd Richardson
    ยท Writer at SE ยท

    As someone who's always on the lookout for the perfect productivity app, I was excited to try out Notion. It promises to be an all-in-one tool for everything from note-taking to project management to personal wikis.

    From the moment you open Notion, you can tell that it's different from other productivity apps. The interface is sleek and modern, and it's easy to navigate. The app is divided into pages, which can be customized with different templates to fit your needs. You can create to-do lists, databases, wikis, calendars, and more.

    One of the things I love about Notion is the ability to create relationships between pages. For example, you can create a database of your favorite books and then link to a page with your book reviews. Or you can create a to-do list and link to a page with notes about the task. This feature makes it easy to keep all of your information in one place and to connect related items.

    ๐Ÿ Competitors: Microsoft Loop
    ๐Ÿ‘ Pros:    Highly customizable|All in one|Collaboration|Cross platform
    ๐Ÿ‘Ž Cons:    Steep learning curve

Top 10 Productivity Apps for MacOSย 2025
Okay, I know, I know. Notion is probably the most predictable pick for a productivity app list. But hereโ€™s the thing: Itโ€™s popular for a reason. Notionโ€™s flexibility, customisation, and overall smooth user experience make it a standout, no matter how many times it pops up on productivity lists. Whether youโ€™re organising tasks, taking notes, or creating databases, Notion lets...
Source: dev.to
Top 10 Notion Alternatives for 2025 and Why Teams Are Choosing Ledger
If you're looking for a Notion alternative that supports real, scalable teamwork, you're not alone. Whether youโ€™ve outgrown Notion or are just exploring more robust, team-friendly platforms, hereโ€™s a breakdown of the top 10 alternatives in 2025โ€”and why Ledger is becoming the go-to choice for modern teams.
How Tight-Knit Teams Get More Done with Innovative Project Management Tools
Notion: More than a task manager, it acts as a knowledge base. You can store guidelines, references, wikis, and to-do lists all under one roof.
Source: medium.com
11 Popular Knowledge Management Tools to Consider in 2025ย 
Notion AI (Optional Add-on) โ€“ $8 per user/month (billed annually). Available for all plans (including the free plan)
Source: knowmax.ai
11 Best Google Keeps Alternatives for 2024
Unlike other note-taking apps, Notion stands out for its endless customization. Itโ€™s like an all-in-one workspace structured by pages and blocks.
Source: upbase.io

LightUtils Reviews

We have no reviews of LightUtils yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Notion seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 441 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Notion mentions (441)

  • Cool SHIT you can do with docker
    Two of the most popular open source note taking app are affine (basically notion but open source) and obsidian (which stores notes in markdown). - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2024)
    Notion | https://notion.so | Android Engineer | SF | hybrid (in office 2x a week) | Full time
      Level: Mid/Mid+ (4-6yrs experience).
    - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Karyam: Simples everyday writing app
    Advanced Notion and Google Doc writing editor. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • My blog post workflow
    I manage my non-work and work-adjacent tasks in Notion. Whenever I have an idea, regardless of how big or small or silly or achievable it is, I'll add it to Notion, and use labels to categorise it by type of output (e.g. blog, silly project, website update). Today I wanted to write a short post for my site. I clicked on the filtered blog post view, and selected this one (because I hoped it would be a quick one!). - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • 6 AI tools that feels illegal to know๐Ÿค–
    Notion.so redefines workspaces. With its intelligent organization and collaboration features, it's more than a productivity toolโ€”it's a digital haven. Discover the art of streamlined and efficient teamwork. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
View more

LightUtils mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of LightUtils yet. Tracking of LightUtils recommendations started around Jul 2026.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Notion and LightUtils, you can also consider the following products

Asana - Asana project management is an effort to re-imagine how we work together, through modern productivity software. Fast and versatile, Asana helps individuals and groups get more done.

Smallpdf - PDF document management and conversion suite

Trello - Infinitely flexible. Incredibly easy to use. Great mobile apps. It's free. Trello keeps track of everything, from the big picture to the minute details.

iLovePDF - Premium online PDF tool set

Obsidian.md - A second brain, for you, forever. Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.

PDF24 - Online PDF Tools - The Swiss Army Knife for PDFs - Merge PDF - Compress PDF - Edit PDF - Convert to PDF