PII Tools vs RedactFile

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.

RedactFile is a web and API service for identifying and removing sensitive information from documents and images before sharing them. Its OCR and PII detection can find names, emails, phone numbers, IDs, account data, and addresses, including in scanned PDFs. Users can review matches, add redaction marks themselves, apply changes, and export a protected copy. Methods include black boxes, blur, pixelation, masking, replacement labels, and removal. File cleanup tools check metadata, comments, author data, OCR layers, annotations, bookmarks, embedded files, forms, and scripts. Some supported browser workflows process files locally; upload, dashboard, public-link, and API workflows may use RedactFile infrastructure and storage. The external v1 API supports OCR and structured extraction through JSON requests with document URLs and an API key; documentation includes JavaScript and Python examples and signed asynchronous webhooks. RedactFile publishes tests and a checker for examining recoverable text and hidden file data. It cautions that the service is not a compliance certification or guarantee that every document is safe to disclose, and recommends manual validation for regulated disclosures. The free plan costs nothing and has a 2MB upload limit, 10 daily uploads, 500MB storage, and no API.