Aihangsoft is a free browser-based alternative to iLovePDF. Merging, splitting, compressing, rotating, unlocking and converting PDFs all run inside your own browser, so the file is never uploaded to a server. There is no daily task limit and no account. The trade-off is narrower format support: iLovePDF handles Office files and electronic signatures, Aihangsoft does not.
iLovePDF's free plan caps merge and split tasks at 100 MB per file, and its own FAQ states that uploaded files stay on its servers for up to two hours before deletion. Aihangsoft has no per-file limit on merging, splitting, reordering or converting, and the only hard cap in the PDF set is 50 MB, which applies to compression, encryption and unlocking. Files never leave the device at any point, which is a property of how the tools are built rather than a retention promise.
If you searched for an iLovePDF alternative, the reason is usually one of three things: you do not want to upload a contract, payslip or medical record to someone else's server, you hit a file size ceiling on the free plan, or you needed batch processing and found it behind a subscription. This page compares the two options honestly, including the cases where iLovePDF is the better tool.
Why people look for an iLovePDF alternative
iLovePDF is a mature product with a wide toolset, and its own documentation is clear about how it works. Files are uploaded to iLovePDF servers, and the official help centre states that they are kept for a maximum of two hours so you can download the result, after which they are permanently removed. The same help pages state that iLovePDF does not access, use, analyse or store the processed data.
The practical friction is elsewhere. The free plan is described in iLovePDF's own pricing page as "limited document processing" rather than a fixed number of tasks per day, while the Premium tier is what unlocks unlimited processing, batch operations and the full toolset. Per-file size limits on the free plan vary by tool: merge and split tasks are listed at 100 MB, compress at 200 MB, and Office to PDF conversion at 15 MB.
None of that is a defect. It is the normal cost structure of a server-based service, because someone has to pay for the CPU and bandwidth that process your file. The alternative model is to move the processing to the machine that already has the file.
How Aihangsoft compares to iLovePDF
Aihangsoft runs the same category of PDF operations, but the work happens in your browser through WebAssembly modules: pdf-lib for merging and page operations, qpdf for encryption and lossless compression, and PDF.js for rendering and text extraction. The file is read from your disk and written back to your disk. No upload step exists in the code path.
| Dimension | Aihangsoft | iLovePDF |
|---|---|---|
| Where files are processed | In your browser, on your device | On iLovePDF servers after upload |
| Account required | No, for every PDF tool | No for free tools |
| Daily task limit | None | Free plan listed as "limited document processing" |
| Free size limit, merge and split | No limit | 100 MB per file |
| Free size limit, compression | 50 MB | 200 MB |
| Batch processing | Included, no upgrade | Premium feature |
| Office to PDF | Not supported | Supported, 15 MB free limit |
| Electronic signature | Not supported | Supported |
| PDF to JPG and PDF to text | Supported, no size limit | Supported |
| Desktop and mobile apps | No, web only | Yes |
| Price for full feature set | Free | Premium listed at US$4 per month billed annually |
The comparison is not a claim that one product is strictly better. It is a list of the axes that matter when you are choosing, and on two of them, Office conversion and mobile apps, iLovePDF is clearly ahead.
Merge PDF
Combine several PDFs into one file in your browser, with no file size limit and no upload.
What "no upload" changes in practice
The clearest way to see the difference is to watch your network activity. With a server-based tool, selecting a file starts an upload of the entire document before any processing begins, which on a slow connection is the slowest part of the job. With Aihangsoft, processing starts immediately because there is nothing to transfer.
The second effect is on limits. Upload bandwidth and server CPU are what a server-based service has to ration, which is why free tiers have task counts and size ceilings. When the work happens on your own machine, the only ceiling is your device's memory. That is why merging and splitting have no size limit here, and why batch operations are not a paid feature.
- No waiting on uploads. A 200 MB scan starts processing the moment you select it.
- No daily counters. You can run the same tool thirty times in an afternoon.
- Nothing to delete. There is no server-side copy, so there is no retention window to trust.
- Offline after load. Once the page and its modules are cached, the tools work without a connection.
Where iLovePDF is still the better choice
Being honest about this part is what makes the rest of the page worth reading. There are workloads where iLovePDF is the right answer and Aihangsoft cannot help at all.
Office documents and e-signatures
If your file is a .docx, .xlsx or .pptx, Aihangsoft cannot open it. Faithful Office rendering needs a full layout engine, which is not something that runs comfortably in a browser tab. iLovePDF converts those formats with a 15 MB free limit, and it also offers electronic signatures through its own workflow. If either is central to your job, use iLovePDF.
Compressing image-heavy scans
Aihangsoft's compression is lossless structural optimisation: it rewrites the PDF's internal structure and recompresses its streams, but it does not re-encode the images inside. A 40 MB scan made of large JPEG pages will shrink only modestly, and a small, already-efficient PDF can come out slightly larger. iLovePDF's compress tool accepts up to 200 MB on the free plan and can downsample images, which produces far smaller files on photo-heavy scans.
Mobile and desktop apps
iLovePDF ships web, desktop and mobile applications. Aihangsoft is web only, although the web version works in mobile browsers.
Moving a PDF task from iLovePDF to Aihangsoft
There is no account to create and no import step, so migration is really just doing the task once in a different tab.
- Pick the matching tool. Merge PDF, Split PDF, Compress PDF, Organize PDF, Protect PDF, Unlock PDF, PDF to JPG, Image to PDF and PDF to Text cover the same ground as iLovePDF's core PDF set.
- Select or drop your file. The file is read locally. On a large document you can confirm this by watching your network monitor, which stays flat.
- Set the options and run. Splitting supports page ranges such as 1-3, 5, 8-10, every page, or fixed chunks. PDF to JPG offers 72, 150 and 300 DPI with a JPG quality slider from 50 to 100.
- Download the result. The output is written straight to your downloads folder. Split and image outputs download as individual files rather than a ZIP, with a single button that downloads the whole set.
What transfers and what does not
Files transfer because they are just files. There is no proprietary project format to migrate. What does not transfer is anything that depended on an iLovePDF feature Aihangsoft does not have: Office conversion, e-signatures, PDF editing of existing text, and the mobile apps. If those are part of your routine, keep iLovePDF for them and use Aihangsoft for the merge, split, compress and convert steps.
Limits of the Aihangsoft PDF tools
These are enforced in the browser and are stated here so nothing is a surprise later.
| Tool | Limit | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Compress PDF | 50 MB per file, lossless only | qpdf needs the whole document in memory and does not re-encode images |
| Protect PDF | 50 MB per file, AES-256 only | qpdf 11.7.0 refuses to write weaker encryption such as RC4 |
| Unlock PDF | 50 MB per file | Same qpdf memory constraint |
| Split PDF | 200 output files per run | Browser download limits |
| PDF to JPG | 40 megapixels per page | Canvas rendering limit at high DPI |
| Merge, Organize, Image to PDF, PDF to Text | No size limit | Page data is copied, not re-encoded |
Two further caveats are worth stating. Encrypted PDFs must be unlocked before the compression, text extraction and merge tools can read them. And PDF to Text reads the embedded text layer first, falling back to OCR only for pages that contain almost no extractable text, so a photographed document will be recognised by OCR while a digital one is read exactly.
