This whole journey started with helping my father with financial documents. He sent me photos (HEIC files) that needed to become a single, merged PDF file. A very easy task, right? I looked at the popular sites everyone recommends: Free Convert, PDF Candy, etc. And then I paused, and in my mind I imagined.
“How the actual hell do people trust these sites with sensitive files? Its closed source, with no privacy promises at all”
Those forms held extremely personal information, information that could be used for malicious intent if exposed. The more I looked at these PDF websites, the more uneasy I felt. All of these tools were closed source. Privacy promises were vague. Some required holding your emails and payment information to use. I myself couldn’t verify what actually happened to my files, and that was unacceptable.
So I called a friend who shared the same exact problems as me. We decided to build the PDF WebApp we wished existed, which we named LuxPDF.
Lux, is a unit of how bright light is, it is also a common shortened word for luxury. We chose the name LuxPDF because we value transparency, clarity (like light), and we value giving people a premium, refined PDF experience they won't find anywhere else.
LuxPDF's main differentiator is that you didn't need to trust what we say, you can check you code yourself in our repository. Our core values align with an old Russian proverb:
"Trust, but verify"
From day one, we chose to be different, not by cramming in every feature possible, but by committing to a few non‑negotiables:
- Privacy‑first. We design features with 100% confidentiality in mind and avoid unnecessary data collection wherever possible.
- Open source. Every code we write is public, transparency you can verify, not just trust. See the repo.
- Free. Really, truly Free. No freemium model, no paywalls, no watermarks, no trials, no limited usage.
- Simple, not over-bloated. Do the simple things better than everyone else, not focusing on adding every feature humanely possible.
A very important aspect of LuxPDF, is that: privacy isn’t a feature. It’s the foundation.
If you’ve ever hesitated to upload a document because it felt risky, you’re not alone, not even a little. We literally built LuxPDF for that exact reason.
Try the tools on our homepage, or audit the code yourself on GitHub. Your documents deserve respect.
Everyone talks about what they will do, but what are some things we won't do developing LuxPDF?
- No silent uploads: None of our tools will ever be server-side. We won’t move your files anywhere.
- No data selling. Ever: The only possible data we collect are through Plausible.io and BuyMeACoffee.
- No features held hostage: You will never pay a premium, or be forced to sign up to use any feature.
Ok it sounds great and all but, how do you guys plan to make money? What is your motive?
LuxPDF might sound way too good to be true, I mean, what's in it for us? Well, a couple of things. For one, we're in a college, and college means we're looking for jobs and other opportunities. We're hoping that LuxPDF could be an amazing tool to add to our resumes. It's a win/win situation, because it means that LuxPDF is a tool you guys can use to make your lives easier, and a tool that we can use to make our resumes look better.
But seriously, for funding. If you genuinely enjoy what our message is, or enjoy our tools, absolutely feel free to share LuxPDF with others, maybe fork your own version and improve on our design to contribute to our project. If you want to want to support is financially: we really hope you guys donate (or if any company is reading this, we hope you guys Sponsor us or make us affiliates). Feel free to visit our BuyMeACoffee here, or if you are a company, feel free to reach us out at: Admin@LuxPDF.com for inquiries.
Join us. Use the tools. File an issue. Suggest a feature. Or read the code and tell us where to improve. This is your PDF toolkit as much as it is ours.
Thank you for reading, and we hope you enjoy our tools.
LuxPDF Admins (Admin@LuxPDF.com)