Free PDF Redactor
This free PDF redaction tool finds emails, phone numbers, card and bank numbers, ID numbers, addresses and dates in your PDF and covers each one with a black bar. Switch on the optional AI to find the names of people, companies and places too. Review everything that was found in one list, keep what should stay, drag across a page to black out anything else, and download a redacted PDF in which the hidden text is gone for good, not just covered. It all happens in your browser, so your PDF is never uploaded.
Redact a PDF online and remove the text under every black bar
No PDF to hand? Try a sample:
Remove the password with our Unlock PDF tool, then redact the unlocked file.
How to Redact a PDF in 3 Steps
1. Open Your PDF
Click to choose a PDF or drag and drop it, or open one of the two samples: a patient intake form or an IT incident report. Every page is read in your browser, and the personal data the tool finds is covered with black bars straight away.
2. Check the Black Bars
Tick the kinds of data to hide, and add custom terms that must always go, such as a client’s name. Every find is listed with its page: click one to jump to it, and click a bar to keep the text under it. Drag across a page to cover anything else, like a signature or a photo, and switch the view to Original to check what is under the bars.
3. Download the Redacted PDF
Click Redact & download. Each page is saved as an image with the bars burned in, so the hidden text, the metadata and everything else in the original file are gone.
Why Use Our PDF Redactor?
Redaction that really removes the text, without uploading a confidential document anywhere.
100% Free
No sign-up, no watermark and no page limit. Redact as many PDFs as you need, completely free.
Privacy First
Your PDF is read and redacted entirely in your browser. It is never uploaded, stored or shared, which is the point of redacting it.
Text Truly Removed
The new PDF is built from images of your pages with the bars drawn in. There is no text under a bar to copy, search or recover, and no hidden layers or earlier versions.
Finds Personal Data
Emails, phone numbers, card numbers, IBANs, Social Security and other ID numbers, addresses, dates, links and passwords are found and covered automatically.
On-Device AI
Turn on the optional AI to find names, organizations and places as well. The 29 MB model downloads once and runs on your own device.
Hide Anything by Hand
Drag across a page to black out signatures, photos, handwriting or a whole scanned page, and click any bar to show the text under it again.
Build Document Automation That Scales With APITemplate
APITemplate is an API-first platform that generates professional PDFs and images at scale from reusable templates, raw HTML, or URLs. Integrate via REST API, SDKs, or no-code tools like Zapier, Make, and n8n. Still comparing providers? Our alternatives and comparisons show how APITemplate stacks up.
Create Document Templates with Visual Editor
Create stunning PDFs using our WYSIWYG Template Editor. With its user-friendly interface, you can design templates visually — no coding required.
Combine your designs with JSON data to generate dynamic, fully-customized PDFs tailored to your needs. Perfect for invoices, reports, certificates, and more. Most teams start with invoice automation from one reusable template.
Convert HTML to PDF
Convert HTML to PDF using APITemplate.io’s powerful HTML Template Editor. Combine your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript skills with dynamic JSON data to create custom templates that deliver pixel-perfect PDFs.
Our PDF generation solution supports modern web technologies, enabling seamless integration for your automated workflows, reports, and more.
Customer Reviews
Trusted by businesses worldwide to generate millions of PDFs and images reliably. See what our customers have to say.
Jamie DearFounderWe are very grateful to Jacky and the team at APITemplate - their software has helped us to auto-generate high quality images for our student reports. It has been the perfect fit for us as we grow our Oxford summer school.
Alex DowdingVice SecretaryThe Wheelchair Football Association
We've successfully automated YouTube thumbnails and match event creation for our Powerchair Football league using your templates. It integrates with our Postgres database on retool.com, is expanding to include league table graphics and match results. Thanks to an AWS Inclusion and Diversity grant, we're enhancing our live-streaming workflow, further boosted by your product's automation capabilities. We're grateful for your excellent service and wanted to share our positive experience.
Nishitha DhanekulaCofounder /CTOAt askreferral.io, We are building referral networking platform for people to pitch and generate leads for different kinds of referrals, including, but not limited to job referrals, product referrals, funding referrals, realtor referrals etc. Having a vibrant social media community is crucial for our growth and APITemplate.io played crucial role in automating generation of digital posters for job postings, profile pitches, funding requests etc, to help us grow from 0 to 200K+ followers in LinkedIn in less than one year.
Danaé NicolasCTOWe've been using APITemplate.io to generate social images for our karting races and it's been a huge time-saver. The support team is super responsive and helpful - they quickly resolved an issue we encountered. We highly recommend this tool to anyone who needs a similar solution.
Ryan TurnbullIT ManagerAPITemplate.io is such an easy application to use. Simple, intuititive, and code free. At simplehuman, we render all our commercial invoices, dispatch notes, and multiple other templates. The ability to create multiple layouts, and group them into a logical container - makes our lives much simpler. This is a great tool to use, both affordable, and the support service turnaround time is second to none! Defintely worth the subscription!
Ron P.Product ManagerHad an issue with template implementation via Make and reached out for support. Within minutes, I got a response and was soon on a Zoom call resolving it. Despite the issue not being directly related to APITemplate.io, their team efficiently guided me to the right formatting. Many thanks!
Nicholas GertzProduct OwnerWe have been using the service daily in our application for a year and are very satisfied with the reliability. It meets all our requirements and requests for changes/improvements can be discussed directly with Jacky 1:1. Thanks and greetings from Germany
Lucas FridmanChief Product OfficerWe use APITemplate to generate key documentation we need to work with our industry partners. We are building a digital solution in an antiquated industry, which means we need to communicate data to our partners in the format that they are accustomed to (pdf forms). APITempate makes it easy for us to do this!
Jean-Paul HornPublisherWe love APITemplate.io for its simplicity and ease of use. Just setup once and "forget" about it due to its fabulous 3rd party integration. New features are regularly added, and reasonable custom requests are honoured within days.
Kevin FrickēAPITemplate.io is one of the best services I have worked with in a very, very long time. They are super responsive and a joy to work with. If you are struggling with PDF's, like I was, check 'em out!
Jacob MonashAutomation SpecialistWe run conferences with a number of speakers, each requiring an individual speaker profile. We used to create all of these profiles manually, but by incorporating APItemplate into our Zapier workflow, our team can generate a complete image with all of the speakers information in one click. Using the template editor is a bit of a learning curve, but the support team is very responsive and helpful.
George CooperAPITemplate.io is great. I love being able to quickly use HTML and CSS templates with dynamic variables to create documents. Support is also fast and responsive. Great vendor!
Frequently asked questions
How do I redact a PDF for free?
Open your PDF in the tool above. Emails, phone numbers, card and bank numbers, ID numbers, addresses and dates are covered with black bars automatically, and switching on the AI covers names too. Click any bar you want to keep, drag across the page to cover anything else, then click Redact & download. There is no sign-up and no limit.
Is the redaction permanent?
Yes. The redacted PDF is made from images of your pages with the black bars painted in, so the hidden text does not exist in the new file at all. Nothing can be copied, searched or lifted out from under a bar, and the original file’s text, hidden layers, earlier versions and metadata are not carried over.
Why isn’t a black box drawn in a PDF editor enough?
A rectangle drawn with a shape or highlight tool sits on top of the text, which is still in the file. Anyone can select and copy it, or move the box away. Court filings and government reports have leaked this way. Real redaction has to remove the text itself, which is what this tool does.
Why can’t I select or search the text in the redacted PDF?
Every page of the redacted PDF is an image, which is what guarantees that nothing survives under a bar. If you need searchable text, run the redacted file through OCR software. It reads the visible words back in, and the blacked-out ones are not there to read.
What does the tool find automatically?
Email addresses, phone numbers, payment card numbers (checked with the Luhn test), IBANs and account numbers, US Social Security numbers, UK National Insurance numbers, passport, policy, claim and other numbers that follow a label, street addresses, US ZIP codes and UK postcodes, dates, links, IP addresses, and passwords and API keys. The checklist shows how many of each kind were found and lets you choose which are hidden. Add custom terms, such as a client or project name, to hide them wherever they appear.
What does the AI option do, and is it private?
It finds the names of people, companies and places, which no fixed pattern can. Switching it on downloads a 29 MB language model from Hugging Face, and the software that runs it from the jsDelivr CDN, once. The model then runs on your own device: your PDF and its text are never sent anywhere. Your browser keeps the model, so it starts quickly next time.
Does it work with languages other than English?
Partly. Emails, phone numbers, card numbers, IBANs, links and your own words are found in any language. Dates, addresses and labelled numbers follow English formats, and the AI model was trained on English text, so it finds fewer names in other languages. Read every page, and drag to cover anything it missed.
Can I redact a scanned PDF?
Yes. A scanned page is a picture with no text to find, so drag across the page to draw a black bar over each part you want hidden. If the scan has been through OCR and has a text layer, the tool reads that layer and finds personal data in it like in any other PDF.
Can I black out signatures, photos or handwriting?
Yes. Drag across any part of a page to cover it with a black bar, whatever is there. Click a bar you drew to remove it again.
Can I redact a filled-in PDF form?
Yes. What is typed into the form’s fields is checked for the same personal data as the page text, and for your own words, and a field that holds any is covered whole. The redacted copy is flattened, so its fields still show what was typed but can no longer be edited.
Does the redacted PDF keep the original’s metadata?
No. The title, author, keywords and creating software of the original are not copied, and neither are its attachments, comments or bookmarks. The new file records only the date it was made and APITemplate.io as its producer.
Can I redact a password-protected PDF?
Not while it is locked. Remove the password with our free Unlock PDF tool first, then redact the unlocked file. To protect the redacted copy, add a password to it with Protect PDF.
Why is the redacted PDF larger than the original?
Pages that held text are now 200 DPI images, which take more space than text. A page of a typical letter comes to a few hundred kilobytes. To make the file smaller, run it through our free Compress PDF tool.
Is my PDF uploaded to a server?
No. Your PDF is opened, redacted and saved by your own browser. It is never uploaded to our servers, so nothing is stored or shared.
What is APITemplate.io?
APITemplate.io is designed for generating PDF documents from reusable templates. It can be easily integrated with popular tools like Zapier, Airtable, Make.com, Bubble.io, n8n, UiPath, or directly via REST API, making it highly adaptable to various workflows.
There are three main ways to generate PDF documents using APITemplate.io:
- Template-based PDF generation: Create PDFs from predefined templates.
- HTML to PDF generation: Convert HTML content directly into PDF format.
- URL to PDF generation: Convert entire web pages to PDFs by simply providing their URLs.
The platform also supports custom CSS and JavaScript, allowing for advanced styling and customization. Its powerful template engine ensures that you can create complex documents efficiently, while the API Console enables you to preview and customize JSON data instantly.
In addition, APITemplate.io offers support for adding custom headers and footers, including page numbers and total page counts, making it an excellent choice for creating polished, professional PDF documents.
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Still Managing PDFs Manually? It’s Time to Automate.
Use APITemplate to automate bulk invoices, reports, and certificates from reusable templates, raw HTML, or URLs. Integrate with Zapier, Make.com, n8n, or REST API.