Safe by design, not by promise.

What we mean by “runs in your browser”

When you open a calculator, converter, or formatter on this site, the JavaScript for that tool downloads once and executes on your device. Your inputs (numbers, text, images, PDFs, audio) are processed locally. We don’t ship your data to a server, and there’s no backend queue, no file store, no “enterprise plan” where it starts going somewhere else.

A handful of tools — and these are clearly labeled — do make an outbound request because they have to. Examples: the IP Lookup tool asks a public IP API what your public IP is (it has to); the Public Holidays lookup queries a holidays API. These are documented on each tool page. No tool on this site uploads your files.

No downloads needed

You never have to install anything. No desktop app, no browser extension, no “open this .exe” step. Some tools produce a file you can save (a PDF you compressed, an image you cropped), but that file is generated in your browser and handed to your device’s save dialog — it’s not an installer.

If a download prompt ever appears that you didn’t trigger by clicking an explicit save button, that’s a bug — please tell us.

No sign-up, no email capture, no paywall

Every page here is available without an account. We don’t collect your email, we don’t run newsletter pop-ups in front of the tool, and we don’t gate features behind a paid tier. The tools are free because they’re small and cheap to host — not because there’s a bait-and-switch coming later.

What data we see

We use two privacy-friendly services from Vercel — Web Analytics (page views, referrers, country-level location) and Speed Insights (page load performance). Neither one uses cookies, neither one identifies you, and both are designed to comply with GDPR. We use Google AdSense to show ads — that is a third party and they set their own cookies to serve ads. You can read the full breakdown in our privacy policy.

We do not sell data. We do not have a data broker partnership. We do not have a “data science team” running experiments on your behavior. It’s a small site.

Malware, viruses, and scanning

Free Tool Arena is a static Next.js site deployed on Vercel. There’s no user-generated upload path, no executable distribution, no PHP stack — the most common vectors for drive-by malware simply don’t exist here. If your antivirus or browser ever flags a page, please send us the exact URL and the warning text so we can investigate.

Honest limits

Because processing happens in your browser, very large files can slow down your device. A 500MB PDF merged with a 500MB PDF is a lot to ask of a phone. If a tool feels slow, it’s almost always because your device is doing the work — not because we’re throttling you.

Our guides are opinionated. They are not financial, legal, medical, or tax advice. We try to be accurate and we cite where it matters, but treat every how-to as a starting point, not a prescription.

Reporting an issue

Found a bug, a wrong number in a calculator, a broken link, a claim that doesn’t hold up? Contact us. We read every message.