LightPDF vs Smallpdf
LightPDF
lightpdf.com
Smallpdf
smallpdf.comSide by side
| Figure | LightPDF | Smallpdf |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $1.33/mo | $10/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 5 | 4 |
| Spec score · PDF editors | 9.2 (#6) | 9.4 (#1) |
| Spec score · PDF Merger Software | 9.3 (#3) | 8.5 (#10) |
| Spec score · PDF mergers | 9.2 (#5) | 8.6 (#7) |
| Founded | 2018 | 2013 |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | LightPDF's MCP documentation says its server can be configured in MCP-compatible clients such as Cursor and Claude. | Integrations include the Chrome Extension, Google Workspace, and Dropbox App. |
Plans
LightPDF
- Free PlanFree
- Monthly Plan$5.99 a month
- Yearly Plan$15.99 a year
- Lifetime Plan$39.99 a month
- Lifetime Plan$39.99, paid once
In their own words
LightPDF
LightPDF is an AI-powered PDF service for editing, converting, annotating, signing, organizing, and chatting with documents. Its AI Agent accepts chat requests for tasks such as merging, conversion, watermark removal, page numbering, and compression. Other listed AI features include translation, image processing, data extraction, invoice generation, and document enhancement. LightPDF offers a conversion API for PDFs and office documents, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, images, HTML, and text. It is available on the web, Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows, with a Chrome/Edge extension. The free plan is web-only, limits files to 10MB, includes five cloud files for one year, and allows three AI Agent questions per day. Monthly and yearly plans include 1,000 AI credits per month; the lifetime plan includes 40,000 credits valid until used. Monthly costs $5.99 a month, Yearly costs $15.99 a year and includes a 3-day free trial, and Lifetime costs $39.99 a month. Premium features can be used on one device at a time.
Smallpdf
Smallpdf is a PDF service with tools for editing, converting, compressing, organizing, sharing, protecting and scanning documents. Users can add text, shapes, images and freehand annotations, create forms and use OCR. It supports electronic signatures, including signing, requesting signatures and tracking documents. Files can be stored, managed and shared across devices, and the mobile app supports PDF scans, document organization and file sharing. Smallpdf is available on the web, Windows, iOS and Android, and also supports a Chrome extension. Integrations include Google Workspace and Dropbox. Thirty PDF tools are available for free, and the free trial lasts seven days. Pro costs $12 a month, billed monthly per user. Team costs $10 a month per user and covers 2 to 100 users, with a minimum of two seats. Smallpdf says it uses 256-bit TLS encryption for information transfer and is ISO/IEC 27001 certified and compliant with GDPR, CCPA and nFADP. Customer support is available around the clock.