Here are 3 free websites to redact PDF online. By PDF redaction means, you can hide some particular content or areas available in the pages of a PDF file. This is handy when you have to share some PDF with others containing the sensitive information. Instead of showing that crucial information of that PDF, you are able to easily share the entire PDF. The sensitive content is covered by a black strip, so nothing is visible. Also, there will be no watermark in the output PDF, which makes these websites more useful.
Though there are many free PDF annotators also available that help to highlight selected text in PDF, those are not useful to redact a PDF file. For that, these websites will be very helpful. Apart from PDF redaction, there are other features that you can use. For example, you can password protect a PDF, encrypt PDF, add comments to PDF, replace pages, compress PDF, and more.
Let’s check these free websites that help us redact PDF online.
Foxit PhantomPDF Online
Foxit PhantomPDF Online is one of my favorite websites on this list. Whether you want to hide some text content or some area in an image available in PDF file, this website is handy.
You can sign in with Google, Facebook, or other supported platforms to use this website. After that, you can add PDF from Box, Google Drive, Dropbox, PC, or OneDrive. To redact PDF online, it provides a Protect tab or menu on its interface. There you will see “Mark for Redaction” and “Apply Redactions” options. Use the first option to select some area in PDF page and use the second option to redact that area in the PDF.
Apart from PDF redact feature, there are many other options. You can highlight a PDF, convert PDF to Word, rotate PDF pages, rearrange PDF pages, digitally sign PDF using DocuSign, and more. I am highly impressed with all the options provided by this website.
Rasteredge.com- Online PDF Editor
Rasteredge.com is another handy website for PDF redaction. It comes with a couple of interesting features to redact PDF online. You can select the number of pages or all pages and then select an area on a particular page. That specific area will be marked for redaction in all those selected pages automatically. Other than this option, it also lets you mark multiple areas in a page for redaction. When the areas are marked, you can use File menu and Save the PDF to PC with the output containing redaction in the set areas.
Using this website for PDF redaction is also very easy. Simply add a file from PC and use Protection menu. There you will see redaction options. Use them as per the needs and then apply the changes by saving the PDF and downloading it to PC.
This website has some other useful features too. For example, you can add pages, reorder pages, use highlighter, predefined stamps, arrow, rectangle, encrypt PDF, and more. It is a very good competitor to Foxit PhantomPDF Online and another site covered here.
PDFzorro
PDFzorro is a very useful PDF editor website. It comes with PDF compressor, page adder, page rotator, export page to image, PDF encryptor, and other useful tools. PDF redact feature is also present which works great. You can add PDF file from PC and use the start edit option. The feature to add PDF from Google Drive is also there but it didn’t work during my testing.
When the PDF is added, the thumbnails of each page are visible on the left side. This makes it very easy to access and select a particular page. When the page is selected, you can see it on the rest of the part of its interface. Now you need to select Rect. tool (if not selected already). Select some area using mouse cursor and that area will be redacted. Mark any other area of your choice for PDF redaction. After that, you can download the PDF using the available button.
We have also covered a detailed review of PDFzorro for PDF redaction.
The Conclusion:
Here I close this list which includes some best options to redact PDF online. My favorite among these websites is “Foxit PhantomPDF Online“. However, I must say, Rasteredge.com and PDFzorro are also good options because output after PDF redaction comes very good. Try these websites when you have to share some PDF with someone but need to hide sensitive data in that PDF before sharing.
