Objects VS RedaktPDF

RedaktPDF's answer:

Two things set RedaktPDF apart:

1. Permanent object-level redaction. The whiteout tool strips content from the PDF's content stream rather than drawing a black overlay on top. Redacted text cannot be recovered via copy-paste, text search, or PDF parsing — unlike most online redaction tools, which leave the underlying content intact in the file.

2. End-to-end encryption. Signed-in users' files are encrypted in the browser with AES-256-GCM before upload, using the Web Crypto API. The server only ever handles ciphertext and never sees plaintext. No other mainstream online PDF editor combines both.

RedaktPDF's answer:

Most online PDF redaction tools — Smallpdf, iLovePDF, PDF24, Adobe Acrobat Online — apply a visual overlay (a black rectangle drawn on top of the text). The underlying content stays in the file and can be extracted by anyone running a basic PDF parser or copy-pasting the "redacted" section. That is a privacy failure disguised as a feature.

RedaktPDF removes content at the file-object level, so redaction is actually permanent. On top of that:

• End-to-end encryption in the browser for signed-in users (AES-256-GCM)
• No sign-up required for the first document — drag, edit, download
• Short auto-delete retention (2 h anonymous, 24 h free, 7 d Pro, 30 d Business)
• OCR for scanned PDFs, so you can redact text even inside image-based documents
• Font preservation on export, so edited documents keep their original look

RedaktPDF's answer:

Privacy-conscious professionals and individuals who handle sensitive documents:

• Legal and compliance teams preparing documents for e-discovery, disclosure, or regulatory filings
• Healthcare and financial professionals removing PII, PHI, or account details before sharing
• EU businesses processing GDPR erasure and rectification requests
• Journalists and researchers redacting sources, identifiers, and sensitive quotations
• Individuals who need to share a document with specific personal information (IDs, addresses, salaries) removed

The common thread is: documents where "the content was hidden" is not good enough — the content actually has to be gone.

RedaktPDF's answer:

RedaktPDF started from a simple observation: every mainstream online PDF "redaction" tool draws a black rectangle over text but leaves the underlying content in the file. Anyone who copy-pastes the rectangle, runs a text search, or opens the file in a PDF parser gets the original text back. For documents containing personal, legal, or medical information, that is a privacy incident waiting to happen.

RedaktPDF was built to do redaction the right way — by stripping the content from the PDF content stream itself — and to do it under strong end-to-end encryption, so users never have to trust the server with their plaintext. It is designed to be the tool that a lawyer, a doctor, or a GDPR officer can use with the same confidence they would place in a desktop application.

RedaktPDF's answer:

Frontend: Next.js 15 (App Router), React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS. PDF rendering in the browser via PDF.js.

PDF engine: pdf-lib for content-stream manipulation; MuPDF for high-performance server-side rendering; Tesseract.js for OCR on scanned documents.

Encryption: Web Crypto API (AES-256-GCM, PBKDF2, AES-KW) for end-to-end encryption performed entirely in the browser. WebAuthn / passkeys and TOTP for multi-factor authentication.

Backend: stateless Next.js API routes on AWS Lambda (deployed via SST v3), Neon serverless PostgreSQL, Upstash Redis, AWS S3 with presigned uploads to bypass Lambda payload limits.

Auth and billing: Auth.js v5 (OAuth + credentials). Paddle for subscription billing.

RedaktPDF's answer:

• Individual privacy-conscious users
• Small and mid-size law firms and independent legal practitioners
• Healthcare and medical practice administrators
• GDPR and data-protection teams at EU businesses
• Independent journalists, researchers, and NGOs