Redact PDF
Black out sensitive content on PDF pages.
or drag and drop · max 50 MB
Redact PDF lets you permanently remove sensitive information from PDF documents — blacking out personal data, financial details, legal identifiers, confidential references, or any content that must not be visible when the document is shared. Redaction is different from simply drawing a black box over text: proper redaction removes the underlying text data from the PDF so that the hidden content cannot be copied, searched, or extracted by anyone who receives the file. iSavePDF's Redact PDF tool lets you select areas to redact on each page, then permanently removes both the visual content and the underlying text data from those areas using pdf-lib, entirely in your browser. Your document is never uploaded to a server. The tool is free with no account required and no watermark on the output.
Step by step
How to redact pdf on iSavePDF
Open Redact PDF on iSavePDF
Visit isavepdf.com/redact-pdf in any modern browser — Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, or Brave on desktop or mobile. No installation, extension, or account is required.
Upload your PDF
Drag your PDF onto the upload zone or click to browse. The tool accepts a single PDF of up to 50 MB. The first page appears in the editing view where you can start marking content for redaction.
Select areas to redact
Click and drag to draw redaction rectangles over the content you want to remove on each page. You can mark multiple areas on a single page and mark different areas on different pages. Navigate between pages using the page controls. The areas to be redacted are shown as black boxes in the preview — exactly as they'll appear in the output.
Apply the redactions
Click Apply Redactions. This step permanently removes the underlying text and content data from all marked areas and replaces them with solid black rectangles. This is a destructive operation — the redacted content cannot be recovered from the output file. Confirm you have selected all intended areas before applying.
Download the redacted PDF
Download the redacted PDF. The black boxes are permanent — the content beneath them cannot be revealed by any PDF viewer. To verify no file was uploaded, open DevTools → Network tab and re-run the process — no outbound file transfer will appear.
How it works
How Redact PDF works
Upload your PDF
Drop the PDF with content you need to redact.
Draw redaction boxes
Click and drag to draw black boxes over the areas you want to hide. Switch pages and add more boxes as needed.
Download the redacted PDF
Black boxes are baked permanently into the page — no server roundtrip.
When to use it
Common use cases
Removing personal data before sharing documents
Documents containing personal data — names, addresses, national ID numbers, dates of birth, financial account numbers, medical record numbers — often need to be shared in a form that protects the individuals' privacy. Under GDPR, HIPAA, and similar data protection regulations, sharing or publishing documents containing identifiable personal data without a legal basis is a violation. Redacting the personal data before sharing produces a document that can be disclosed without exposing the underlying personal information.
Responding to FOIA and disclosure requests
Freedom of Information requests and legal disclosure obligations often require producing documents with certain information removed — third-party personal data, commercial-in-confidence information, legal privilege, or national security material. Proper redaction ensures the exempted information is genuinely removed and cannot be retrieved from the disclosed document, which is a legal requirement under most FOI frameworks.
Sharing contracts with commercially sensitive terms removed
When a contract needs to be shared beyond the original parties — for reference, for a tender process, as a template — commercially sensitive terms (pricing, discount rates, exclusivity clauses, performance thresholds) often need to be removed. Redacting these sections produces a document that can be shared more broadly without disclosing the specific commercial arrangements.
Publishing documents with confidential references removed
Research papers, reports, and policy documents often reference individuals, organisations, or cases that must be anonymised before publication. Redacting identifying references — names, organisations, case numbers, locations — produces an anonymised version suitable for public release while preserving the substance of the document.
Why iSavePDF
The privacy-first way to redact pdf
Redaction is applied precisely to documents that should not be seen in their unredacted form by unauthorised parties. Uploading a document containing sensitive personal data, privileged legal content, or confidential business information to an online redaction service creates the very exposure the redaction is meant to prevent — the unredacted document crosses a network to a server outside your control before the redaction even happens.
iSavePDF's redaction tool runs entirely in your browser using pdf-lib. Your PDF is read from your device, the redaction areas are applied in your browser's memory, and the redacted PDF is saved to your downloads folder. The unredacted content never leaves your machine at any point in the process. The tool is free and funded by display advertising — there's no business model that involves receiving or processing the content of the documents you redact.
Tips & limits
Tips for the best results
Drawing a black box is not the same as redacting
In many PDF editors, drawing a filled black rectangle over text hides the text visually but leaves it fully accessible in the underlying PDF — anyone with a PDF editor can delete the box and read the text beneath it. iSavePDF's redaction tool permanently removes the underlying text data from the redacted areas, not just the visual appearance. This is the critical difference between annotation (hiding) and redaction (removing).
Redaction is irreversible
Once applied, redactions permanently remove the content from the PDF. The black boxes cannot be removed to reveal the original content, because the original content no longer exists in the file. Always keep a copy of the unredacted original in a secure location before applying redactions.
Check for text in headers, footers, and metadata
Sensitive information may appear in places beyond the visible page content — PDF metadata fields (author, title, subject, keywords), embedded document properties, and invisible text layers. The redaction tool addresses visible page content. For a thorough redaction of a legally sensitive document, verify the PDF metadata is also cleared of identifying information using a PDF editor.
Use search to find all instances before redacting
If you're redacting a recurring piece of information — a name, an account number, a reference code — use your PDF reader's search function to locate all instances across the document before uploading to the redaction tool, so you can mark every occurrence on every page.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
- Yes — completely free with no account, no watermark, and no usage limits.