Aihangsoft is a free CloudConvert alternative that converts images, video, audio and PDFs inside your own browser. Free CloudConvert accounts allow 10 conversion credits per day, reset daily, and files are uploaded to CloudConvert servers. Aihangsoft has no daily credit count, no account and no upload step, but it covers far fewer formats.
CloudConvert's free tier is a credit meter, and the cost per job is not always one credit: Office to PDF costs two, PDF to Office costs four, and processing time over one minute adds a surcharge by the minute. A single long conversion can therefore consume most of a day's allowance. Aihangsoft does not meter anything, because the conversion runs on your own CPU. The trade-off is scope: CloudConvert lists 212 formats across 11 categories, while Aihangsoft covers the common image, video, audio and PDF conversions listed below.
People search for a CloudConvert alternative for two reasons. One group runs out of credits, because ten a day goes quickly once a PDF to Office job costs four. The other group does not want to upload the file at all, whether it is a signed contract or a customer recording. This page compares what each service does, including where CloudConvert wins.
Why people look for a CloudConvert alternative
CloudConvert is one of the broadest converters available, and its own documentation is explicit about the limits. The free tier allows 10 conversion credits per day, reset each day, with a maximum file size of 1 GB, a maximum processing time of 5 minutes per job, 5 concurrent tasks and Low priority in the processing queue. Paid plans raise the credit balance and the queue priority rather than removing the meter.
The credit system is more granular than the headline number suggests. A standard conversion costs 1 credit, Office to PDF costs 2, iWork to PDF costs 2, and PDF to Office costs 4. Any job longer than a minute adds a per-minute charge, so a three hundred page scan can use most of a day's allowance.
The second source of friction is the upload. Files are transferred to CloudConvert servers, held in temporary storage and processed there, and the official privacy policy states that they are deleted automatically within 24 hours of processing. That is a clear promise, but the file still exists on other hardware for a period.
Neither is a flaw. Server processing is what makes support for 212 formats and 11 categories possible, because the engines run on infrastructure the user does not own.
How Aihangsoft compares to CloudConvert
Aihangsoft uses the browser as the conversion engine: Canvas and WebAssembly codecs for images, ffmpeg compiled to WebAssembly for video and audio, and pdf-lib, PDF.js and qpdf for PDFs. The file is read from local disk, processed in memory and saved back to local disk, so there is no upload endpoint and no credit meter.
| Dimension | Aihangsoft | CloudConvert |
|---|---|---|
| Where conversion runs | In your browser, on your device | On CloudConvert servers after upload |
| Account needed | No | Not required, optional registration offered |
| Free allowance | No limit | 10 conversion credits per day, reset daily |
| Credit cost per job | Not applicable | 1 standard, 2 Office or iWork to PDF, 4 PDF to Office, plus per-minute charge over one minute |
| Maximum file size, free tier | No fixed cap, bounded by device memory | 1 GB per file |
| Maximum processing time | No fixed cap | 5 minutes per job |
| Concurrent jobs | One at a time in the tab | 5 concurrent tasks |
| Queue priority | Not applicable | Low on the free tier |
| Formats supported | Common image, video, audio and PDF formats, listed below | 212 formats across 11 categories |
| Office, ebook and archive input | Not supported | Supported |
| API and automation | None | Full REST API |
| File retention | Nothing is uploaded, nothing to delete | Automatic deletion within 24 hours of processing |
| Price | Free | 1000 credits for US$18 as a one-off, credits never expire, or 1000 credits per month for US$10, reset monthly |
The format count is CloudConvert's biggest advantage, and the absence of a client-side API is Aihangsoft's biggest gap. If you need to convert files from a script or a server, CloudConvert is the product you want.
Video Converter
Convert video to MP4, WebM, MKV, MOV, GIF or MP3 in the browser, with no upload and no daily credit count.
The formats each one actually handles
CloudConvert's format coverage is genuinely much wider. Aihangsoft covers six conversion jobs, all of them local:
- Image Converter outputs WebP, PNG, JPEG and AVIF. Output quality is fixed at 0.92. Batch conversion is supported, each result downloads individually, and a Download all button saves the whole set.
- Video Converter outputs MP4, WebM, MKV, MOV, GIF and MP3. MP4 is encoded as H.264 at CRF 23 with AAC 128 kbps audio and a faststart flag, and WebM is encoded as VP8 with Opus at 128 kbps.
- Video to MP3 outputs MP3, M4A or WAV, with a bitrate choice of 128, 192 or 320 kbps and 192 as the default. WAV output is lossless.
- Audio Converter outputs MP3, WAV, OGG, M4A or FLAC, with a bitrate choice of 128, 192 or 320 kbps, 192 by default, and a sample rate choice of keep original, 44100, 48000 or 22050 Hz, with keep original as the default. One run accepts up to 30 files.
- PDF to JPG renders PDF pages to JPG or PNG at 72, 150 or 300 DPI.
- Image to PDF combines multiple images into one PDF, accepting JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, GIF and BMP as input.
What Aihangsoft does not have: Office conversion for docx, xlsx and pptx, ebooks such as epub and mobi, archives, vector formats such as SVG, AI and EPS, fonts, and any server-side queue or API. Those are the categories where the 212-format figure earns its keep.
Where CloudConvert is still the better choice
Office, ebook and vector files
If the input is a docx, epub or svg file, Aihangsoft cannot open it. Office conversion needs a full layout engine, which does not fit comfortably in a tab, so CloudConvert handles those on its servers.
Automation and API use
CloudConvert offers a REST API, so a build script or a scheduled job can convert files with nobody present. Aihangsoft has no API and no server-side queue. Anything that must run unattended belongs on CloudConvert.
Very large files and long jobs
CloudConvert's free tier accepts files up to 1 GB and jobs up to 5 minutes, with five concurrent tasks. Aihangsoft processes in the browser, so the ceiling is the memory the tab can hold, and a very large video can fail on a machine with limited RAM.
One honest point: on a paid CloudConvert plan the credit meter stops mattering for occasional use, and US$10 per month for 1000 credits is not expensive for a business workflow. Aihangsoft's advantage there is not price, it is that the file never leaves the machine.
Moving a conversion over
Migration is straightforward, because there is no account, no import step and no project file to move.
- Check the format pair. Confirm Aihangsoft supports both your input and output using the list above. If the input is a document, ebook or vector file, keep CloudConvert.
- Open the matching tool. Images to WebP or AVIF use Image Converter, images to PDF use Image to PDF, and each audio and video format has its own page.
- Add the file and set the options. Quality, bitrate and sample rate controls sit on the page before you start, and no data is transferred while you adjust them.
- Convert and download. The result goes straight to your downloads folder. Batch tools save each file separately with a Download all option, and there is no credit count to watch.
Limits of the Aihangsoft converters
These are the real ceilings, stated here so nothing comes as a surprise in the middle of a job.
| Tool | Limit | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Audio Converter | 30 files per run | Keeps the browser tab inside memory limits during batch encoding |
| Video Converter, WebM output | VP8 video with Opus audio | The VP9 encoder in ffmpeg.wasm crashes after the first frame, so VP8 is used deliberately |
| Video Converter, MP4 output | H.264 at CRF 23 with AAC 128 kbps and faststart | Encoding parameters are fixed instead of exposed as settings |
| Image Converter | Output quality fixed at 0.92 | Chosen as a balance between file size and visible artefacts |
| Audio and video bitrate | 128, 192 or 320 kbps only | A fixed menu of standard rates rather than a free numeric field |
| Office, ebook, archive and vector input | Not supported | Needs format libraries and a layout engine that do not fit in the browser |
| Server-side API | None | All work happens client side, so there is no endpoint to call |
