About PDF on a Plane
This site makes an unusual claim — that your files never leave your device — so it should be obvious who is making it. Here is the company, where it is registered, and how it intends to be paid.
Who we are
PDF on a Plane is made by Herdo MB, a small company registered in Lithuania and therefore inside the European Union and under the GDPR. There is no holding company, no investor and no parent group.
Everything on this site is written and maintained by the same small team that makes the PDF on a Plane apps. If something here is wrong, contact@pdfonaplane.com reaches the person who wrote it.
The apps this site came from
PDF on a Plane is a document scanner for Android and iPhone with the same promise and the same design as this site. It is where the tools here were first written.
- PDF on a Plane for Android
- PDF on a Plane for iPhone
The one difference worth knowing
The app keeps a library on your phone, so it has folders, search and a backup file. This site keeps nothing at all: a file arrives, is changed in the tab, and is handed back. That is not a feature we have not got round to. It is the same promise made in the only way a website can make it — there is no library to leak, no account to breach and no backup of yours to lose, because none of them exists. The cost is real and we would rather say it: close the tab and the result is gone, and we cannot get it back for you.
The studio, and why it is on another address
The same company also runs a design and marketing studio, at studio.pdfonaplane.com. It used to be at this address and we moved it. A portfolio of client work sitting on the same domain as "your documents never leave your device" makes the second thing read as advertising for the first, and the claim on this site has to be able to stand on its own. Mentioning it here is the honest half of moving it.
What this site can't do
A list of things the code on these pages is not able to do, rather than a list of things we have decided against.
- Can'tSend your file anywhere
- Can'tShow an ad or a paywall
- Can'tLearn anything about your file — its name, size or contents
- Can'tKeep a copy after you close this tab
- Can'tGet anything back for you afterwards
How this is paid for
All 26 tools on this website are free, with no advertising, no account, no limit on how many files you may run, no page limit, no watermark and no upgrade prompt. That is a commitment, it is dated, and it is on a page you can link to.
Dated 9 August 2026
This site costs a few pounds a month to run. Everything happens on your computer, so there is no fleet of servers converting documents and no bill that grows with the number of people using it. Sites that upload your file have that bill, and advertising or a subscription is how they pay it.
What it is built from
Open-source components under Apache-2.0, BSD and MIT licences only. No AGPL, nothing under a non-commercial licence, and nothing that contacts a server of its own. These are the components that do the work:
- pdf.js · Apache-2.0 · reads and draws PDF pages
- pdf-lib (@cantoo fork) · MIT · writes PDF files
- tesseract.js · Apache-2.0 · reads the text in a scan
- qpdf (via qpdf-wasm) · Apache-2.0 · rebuilds a damaged PDF
- signature_pad · MIT · draws a signature on a canvas
- Astro · MIT · builds these pages
- Svelte · MIT · runs the tool interface
What you won't find here
- No advertising, on any page
- No sign-in, because there is no account
- No upgrade tier and no watermark to pay to remove
- No newsletter box, no rate-this-site prompt, no chat widget
- No analytics of any kind until you accept the banner, and none ever if you decline
Write to us
contact@pdfonaplane.com reaches a person, usually within two working days. Bug reports are welcome and so is being told we are wrong about something on this page — there is no crash reporter on this site, so an email is genuinely the only way we find out.