Comparison · Privacy · File Conversion
Free File Converter vs Convertio: Which is right for you?
Quick verdict. Convertio.co is a polished, well-engineered file converter with a clean UI, strong format coverage, and a real business behind it (German infrastructure, GDPR-compliant). If you need OCR on a scanned PDF, conversion of office documents, or you've already bought a Convertio subscription, it's a solid choice. The trade-offs: free tier is capped at 10 files per day with a 100MB max, your files are uploaded, and many useful features sit behind a $9.99–$25.99/mo paywall. Free File Converter is the better fit for everyday conversions you do more than 10 times in a day, anything privacy-sensitive, and the standard image/PDF/HEIC/data-format jobs we already cover.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Free File Converter | Convertio |
|---|---|---|
| Files uploaded to a server? | No — runs in your browser | Yes — uploaded for processing |
| Daily file cap | Unlimited | 10 files / day on free tier |
| Per-file size cap (free tier) | 25MB | 100MB free; up to 1GB on paid |
| Supported formats | 40+ image / PDF / data / subtitle formats | 300+ including video, audio, ebooks, documents |
| HEIC support | Native HEIC → JPG / PNG / PDF, in-browser | Yes, via upload |
| OCR (scanned PDF → text) | Basic text extraction only — no OCR yet | Yes, included in Premium |
| Office documents (DOCX, XLSX) | XLSX → CSV in-browser | Full DOCX/XLSX/PPTX ↔ PDF |
| Mobile / phone UX | PWA, installable, share-target | Mobile web; native app exists but ad-supported |
| Ads in the UI? | None | Light ads on free tier |
| Account required? | No | Free tier works without; batch/large needs signup |
| Works offline? | Yes — installable PWA | No — server-based |
| Open-source bits | Uses open libraries; embed widget will be open-sourced | Proprietary backend |
| Paid tier pricing | None — free forever | $9.99 / $14.99 / $25.99 per month |
| Privacy / retention | N/A — files never uploaded | Inputs deleted immediately; outputs at 24h |
| Hits a paywall mid-batch? | Never | Yes, at file 11/day on free tier |
When to use Convertio
- You need OCR on a scanned PDF (we don't ship it yet).
- You're converting office documents — DOCX ↔ PDF, XLSX ↔ PDF, PPTX export.
- You need audio or video conversion.
- Your files are between 25MB and 100MB (above our cap, below their free cap).
- You're already on a paid Convertio plan and the workflow is locked in.
When to use Free File Converter
- You hit Convertio's 10-files-per-day free cap.
- The files are personal — iPhone HEIC photos, financial PDFs, screenshots, anything sensitive.
- You're on a phone or a slow connection and don't want to wait for an upload round-trip.
- You want to install the converter to your home screen and use it offline.
- The conversion is one we already ship — image, PDF, HEIC, SVG, CSV, JSON, YAML, Markdown, SRT/VTT.
Privacy comparison
Convertio is a legitimate, German-headquartered company that takes privacy seriously by industry standards: input files are deleted immediately after conversion, outputs are deleted at 24h or on-click, and they comply with GDPR. For ordinary stock-photo conversions, that's better than the median for the category.
Free File Converter doesn't need a deletion policy because there's no server-side copy in the first place. Conversion runs in your browser via canvas re-encoding and WASM decoders. You can verify the no-upload claim in DevTools → Network — the file count stays at zero during conversion. For HEIC photos with GPS metadata, scanned tax documents, or business files under NDA, "never left the device" is a stronger guarantee than "deleted after conversion."
This isn't a knock on Convertio — they're one of the more privacy-conscious players in the server-based segment. It's a structural difference: their architecture requires upload to function; ours doesn't.
Frequently asked questions
What's Convertio's free-tier limit, exactly?
10 file conversions per day with a 100MB per-file maximum on the free tier. Past that, you'll be prompted to subscribe to Light ($9.99/mo), Basic ($14.99/mo), or Pro ($25.99/mo) — each with progressively higher daily and per-file caps.
Does Convertio actually delete my file?
Their TOS says input files are deleted immediately after conversion, and output files at 24 hours (or sooner if you click to delete). German GDPR-compliant infrastructure. For most use cases that's fine, but it still requires trusting a third party with your file in the meantime — which the local-first approach avoids entirely.
Why doesn't Free File Converter do OCR?
OCR is a heavyweight workload — Tesseract.js is around 10MB of WASM per language pack plus a non-trivial model. We're evaluating whether to ship it without breaking mobile load times. Our current PDF to text only handles PDFs with an existing text layer (which is most of them). For scanned image-only PDFs, Convertio's OCR is genuinely useful.
Which one is faster?
For small files (under ~10MB), Free File Converter is dramatically faster because there's no upload/download round-trip — the conversion starts the instant you drop the file. For very large files (100MB+), Convertio's server may finish faster than your laptop, especially on mobile devices. The free tier's 10-files-per-day cap also forces a stop-and-restart workflow we don't have.
Why is Free File Converter free if Convertio costs money?
Convertio runs all conversion on their servers, which means their marginal cost per conversion is real (CPU time, bandwidth, storage). They charge to cover that compute. Our conversion runs on your CPU in your browser, so our marginal cost is literally zero. Free is structurally sustainable for us in a way it isn't for them.
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Files stay on your device. No login. Installs as a PWA on iPhone, Android, and desktop.
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