Wolf PDF
Free PDF tools: merge, split, convert, edit, sign
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Wolf PDF - Free PDF tools: merge, split, convert, edit, sign

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Wolf PDF is a free, privacy-first toolkit for everyday PDF work. Merge, split, compress, convert (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, images), edit, redact, sign, add page numbers, and even ask questions about your PDF with cited answers. No watermarks, no forced sign-ups, and files are auto-deleted after 30 minutes

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Maker
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Hi everyone, I'm Michael, the maker of Wolf PDF. This one came straight out of frustration. Every time I needed to do something simple with a PDF, I'd end up on Adobe or one of the big enterprise tools, see all the features sitting right there, and then hit a wall. You couldn't actually use most of them without a clunky onboarding flow, a download, or a subscription, even for a single one-off task. So I built the opposite. Wolf PDF puts every tool in one place, gives you free usage on all of them with no account and no watermark, and if you turn out to be a serious user you can pay for more. No forcing you into slow desktop apps or installs. It covers the full set: merge, split, compress, convert, edit, redact, sign, plus an Ask-PDF feature that answers questions about your document with citations. Files are auto-deleted after 30 minutes. I'd love your feedback, especially on which tools you reach for most and what you feel is missing. Happy to answer anything.

How does the AI question feature handle scanned PDFs or documents that are mostly images, does the OCR happen on your servers or locally?

Maker

 At the moment OCR for Ask PDF is not automatic. Ask PDF first tries to extract readable text from the PDF on our backend. If the document is mostly images or scanned pages, it asks the user to run OCR first.

The OCR itself is server-side in Wolf PDF’s conversion tools, not something happening in the browser. A smoother “OCR then Ask” flow is on my roadmap because it would make scanned documents much easier to query.

Curious how the AI question-answering feature handles scanned or image-only PDFs - does it run OCR first or just fall back to "can't find that" if there's no text layer?

Maker

 Right now Ask PDF works best with PDFs that already have a readable text layer. If the PDF is scanned or image-only and there is no extractable text, it will return a “run OCR first” style message rather than pretending it can read the image.

Wolf PDF does have OCR/conversion capability elsewhere, especially in the PDF-to-Word OCR flow, but automatic OCR-before-Ask is not yet wired into Ask PDF. That is a very sensible next improvement.

How does the "ask questions about your PDF" feature actually work behind the scenes, like is it running locally or sending text to an external model?

Maker

 Great question. Ask PDF currently runs server-side rather than fully locally. We extract the readable text layer from the uploaded PDF, choose the most relevant page context, and send that text plus your question to our configured AI provider. In production that is currently.

We don’t expose API keys in the browser, and uploaded files are handled as temporary processing files rather than long-term training data. The feature is designed for document Q&A with citations, not as a local-only/offline AI system.

How does the AI question feature actually pull cited answers from a PDF, and does it work on scanned/image-only documents or just ones with selectable text?

Maker

 It works best on PDFs that already have selectable text. We pull answers from the document text and include page references where we can. For scanned or image-only PDFs, Ask PDF doesn’t automatically run OCR yet, so the best flow today is to OCR the file first and then ask questions on the readable version. I do think automatically offering OCR before Ask PDF would be useful though, so that’s something I’ll look at.

Curious how the AI question feature works under the hood — is it running locally on my machine or sending the document off to a server, and if it's the latter, what's actually happening during that 30 minute window before deletion?

Maker

 Great question. It isn’t fully local at the moment. For Ask PDF, the file is uploaded temporarily so the server can extract the readable text and answer against the relevant pages. It stays available during that active session so you can ask follow-up questions, but it isn’t saved as a document library. When the session ends we try to clean it up, and the automatic cleanup catches abandoned sessions normally within 30 minutes.

Curious how the AI question-answering feature actually works in practice. Is it pulling answers only from the uploaded PDF, or does it pull from external sources too?

Maker

 Thanks dor the question. Right now it answers from the uploaded PDF rather than using external sources. We pull out the readable text, find the most relevant pages, and use that context to answer your question. I do think an optional external retrieval mode could be useful in future, but I’d want that to be something the user clearly switches on, so it’s obvious when the answer is based only on the PDF versus when extra context has been brought in.

Finally a pdf tool that does not shove a sign up wall in my face, the merge worked clean and the auto delete is a nice touch.

Maker

 Thank you, that’s really nice to hear. I wanted the basic PDF tools to feel quick and useful without forcing people to create an account first.

Love that the files auto-delete after 30 minutes instead of burying that in fine print. That's a quiet but real nod to user trust.

Maker

 Thank you, really appreciate that. I wanted people to feel comfortable using it for quick PDF jobs without worrying that their files are being kept around afterwards.