Privacy
The file you are cleaning contains the very information you are trying to remove. Sending it to a server first defeats the purpose. PDFClean has no upload step, and this page shows why that difference is worth checking rather than assuming.
What happens to your files here
Every PDF is read with the browser's File API, parsed in memory, rewritten in memory, and verified in memory. The page's JavaScript is static HTML, CSS and JS served from this domain; there is no API endpoint that accepts a file and no storage bucket behind the site. When you close the tab, the file is gone from memory and nothing was ever transmitted.
You can check this directly: open the page, disconnect from the network, and clean a file. The tool keeps working.
What this site does not do
- No file, filename or metadata is transmitted anywhere.
- No accounts, no email collection, no newsletter.
- No analytics scripts, no ad code loaded, no tracking pixels, no social embeds.
- No first-party cookies and no localStorage for your documents.
ads.txt is present for future advertising, but no advertising code runs today. If ads are ever added, this page will describe them before they ship.
What the big converters do
Nothing below is an accusation. Uploading a file to a server is a normal way to build a web tool, and deleting files after an hour or two is a reasonable policy. The point is narrower: in each case the document has to leave your device before the metadata is removed. These are the tools' own words, quoted on 22 October 2026.
“Metadata is removed on special PDF24 servers.”PDF24, Remove PDF metadata, tools.pdf24.org/en/remove-pdf-metadata, quoted 22 October 2026. The same page also states: “Files are automatically deleted from the PDF24 server after one hour.”
“Files stay private. Automatically deleted after 2 hours.”Sejda, Edit PDF Metadata upload panel, sejda.com/en/edit-pdf-metadata, quoted 22 October 2026. The same page describes the flow as: “Files are safely uploaded over an encrypted connection… After processing, they are permanently deleted.” Its free tier is listed as “3 tasks per hour”.
“Data sent between your browser and our servers is encrypted with modern TLS ciphers.”Metadata2Go, Your files are safe section, metadata2go.com, quoted 22 October 2026. The same section says files are “Stored on servers with full-disk encryption, with encrypted backups.” Its homepage also describes the apps as tools that “runs in the browser and needs no account” — the two descriptions do not quite agree, but both mention servers.
The pattern is consistent: the web versions of these tools process on a server, and the file is uploaded first. That does not make them unsafe, and their deletion policies may be perfectly honest. It does mean that the file — with its author name, company, timestamps and editing history still attached — has to travel before it is cleaned.
Why verification belongs in a privacy claim
A privacy claim is easy to write and hard to check. PDFClean's claim is testable in two ways. First, the network panel stays quiet while a file is cleaned; no request carries the file. Second, the cleaned output is re-opened and checked before download, so the tool cannot quietly hand back a file that still contains what you asked to remove.
Hosting
The site is static and hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Like any web host, Cloudflare sees the request for the page itself: IP address, user agent, the URL requested. That is ordinary hosting traffic for a static page and contains nothing about the PDFs you clean, because the PDFs are never part of a request.
Changes
If the way this site handles data changes, this page changes with it and the date below is updated. The current design — no uploads, no accounts, no analytics, no ad code — is the design the tool shipped with.
Last updated: 22 October 2026.