THE PAID BENCH · ONE PAYMENT · YOURS TO KEEP
The full Toolkit. $39, once.
The free bench handles one file at a time. The Toolkit is the whole workshop: bulk jobs, the form builder, compression, scan reading, and your signature and form answers saved on your own device — for less than three months of the cheapest Adobe rent.
One-time payment through Stripe. You land on the Toolkit page the moment you have paid.
Everything in the Toolkit
Everything in bulk
Merge twenty files at once. Stamp fifty contracts with the same watermark. Split a whole folder of scans in one sitting — no per-job walls, because there is no server to protect.
Merge, unlimited
Any number of files, any order, any size your device can hold.
Split & extract
Pull any set of pages out of any file, as many times as you like.
Organize pages
Reorder and delete pages with the full page list in front of you.
Rotate
Fix sideways scans for good, one page or the whole file.
Fill forms
Every typed field answered on screen, then flattened so the answers cannot be changed after you send it.
The form builder
Turn a plain PDF — or a blank page — into a fillable form: text fields, checkboxes and dropdowns, placed where you say. The job the free sites simply do not offer.
Sign, your way
Draw it, type it, or use the signature you saved. Placed exactly where you put it.
Saved signature & form answers
Your signature and your usual form answers (name, address, the boxes you always tick) saved in your browser, on your device only — filled in one tap next time. Nothing is sent anywhere; there is no account to leak.
Watermark
DRAFT, COPY, CONFIDENTIAL — as faint or as firm as you like.
Page numbers
Any format, any corner — including the "Page 3 of 12" the court wants.
Add text
Dates, names, reference numbers — stamped onto the page where they belong.
Images to PDF
A camera roll of receipts becomes one clean PDF.
PDF to images
Every page as a PNG or JPG, at print size.
Extract text
The words out of any text-carrying PDF, ready to paste anywhere.
Read a scan (OCR)
A photographed or scanned page becomes real text. Honest limits: it reads clean print well, it is slow on long documents, and it prefers a computer. No honest tool does this instantly — ours tells you so.
Compress
Two honest ways: a structural squeeze that never touches quality, and — for scans — a picture squeeze that trades a little sharpness for a much smaller file, labeled as such before you run it.
PDF to Word (text)
The words of your PDF in a Word document you can edit. Honest limit, printed here on purpose: the layout does not survive — columns and tables come out as plain text. Anyone who promises more from a browser is guessing.
Works offline
Install the Toolkit once and it opens with no internet at all — plane, dead zone, or a network tab you do not trust. Your bench, on your device. (The scan reader loads its reading file the first time you use it; after that, it works offline too.)
The math, in the open
| Year one | Three years | |
|---|---|---|
| Adobe Acrobat Standard | $179.88 | $539.64 |
| Adobe Acrobat Pro | $239.88 | $719.64 |
| Smallpdf Pro | about $108–120 | about $324–360 |
| PDFByHand Toolkit | $39 | $39 |
Prices checked October 2026. The free bench stays free either way — the Toolkit is for the jobs the bench cannot hold.
Questions, answered straight
What exactly do I get for $39?
The Toolkit page — the full Workshop with every job on this page, including bulk work, the form builder, compression, scan reading and your saved signature and form answers. You pay once through Stripe and land on the Toolkit page; install it or bookmark it, and it is yours. There is no account and no expiry.
Is it really not a subscription?
Really. One payment of $39. The tools run in your browser, so there is no service to keep renting — the same reason the free bench can be free.
What can't the Toolkit do?
The same honesty list as the free bench: it will not retype the words already on a page, it does not do true redaction, it cannot add a password to a file, and its signatures are visual signatures, not certificate-based digital signatures. The whole list is public, on purpose: What PDFByHand can't do.
Will it work on my phone?
The everyday jobs are built phone-first. The heavy jobs (reading a long scan, shrinking a huge scanned file) will tell you plainly that they prefer a computer — and still try, carefully, in small pieces.
Where is my data?
On your device. Files are processed in your browser; your saved signature and form answers live in your browser's own storage on your machine. We could not see them if we wanted to — there is no server for them to be on.