PII Tools vs Redacta

PII Tools locates and helps remediate personally identifiable information, payment-card data and health information across digital assets. It scans more than 400 file formats in local or cloud storage, covering structured and unstructured data. Analytics and reporting support review, while users can redact or erase information individually or in batches. Person Cards aggregate detected records associated with people across files, email and databases, with spreadsheet export. Document redaction supports in-place changes and pseudonymization for PDFs, Excel files and images, and a REST API can automate workflows. Named connectors include Microsoft 365 Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Salesforce, Google Drive, Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL/MariaDB. It can run on a customer server, keeping sensitive data within the network according to the maker. Deployment uses Docker-capable machines or virtual machines. A seven-day hosted trial is available by contacting PII Tools.

Redacta is a free, open-source web tool for redacting or pseudonymising sensitive information in PDF files from plain-language instructions. It can identify and permanently remove names, email addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, addresses, account numbers, and other personally identifiable information. It also detects embedded photos, signatures, logos, and screenshots for image redaction. Pseudonymisation replaces real names, addresses, and identifiers with fictional alternatives while keeping documents readable. Redacta says output PDFs retain their formatting, layout, fonts, and page structure. PDF parsing and redaction run in the browser through WebAssembly and MuPDF, and the site says files are not uploaded to a server. You provide your own Google Gemini or OpenAI API key, with requests sent directly to that provider. The free trial routes extracted text through a backend proxy. No signup, installation, watermarks, or usage limits are listed.