Looking for a Sejda Alternative?
Sejda has the most generous free tier of any major PDF utility — 3 tasks per hour, 200MB max file size, and a wide tool selection that covers most PDF jobs. The catch isn’t trickery — it’s the architecture. Some Sejda tools run on your machine in a desktop install, some run in your browser, and several run on Sejda’s servers without making the distinction visible. If you need quick, occasional PDF work and you’re not picky about where your files get processed, Sejda works. If you want every operation guaranteed-local with no caps and no signup, Signegy is the alternative.
This page is the honest “Signegy vs Sejda” — where each tool wins, and where the choice depends on what you’re actually doing.
What Sejda’s Free Tier Actually Limits
Sejda’s “free” is more usable than Smallpdf’s two-document-per-day cap, but it’s still metered. The free tier permits 3 tasks per hour. A “task” is one operation — one merge, one split, one compress, one sign. File size is capped at 200MB. You’re also limited to 200 pages per document on the free tier.
Premium starts around $7.50 per month if billed annually, $5 per week for the weekly pass, and roughly $63 per year. Premium removes the 3-per-hour cap and bumps the file size ceiling. There’s also a desktop version of Sejda (one-time purchase, around $63) which removes the hourly cap because everything runs locally on the desktop install.
The architecture explains the structure. When Sejda processes your file on their servers, they pay for that compute and storage. The 3-per-hour cap is the throttle on free server use; Premium is the way to lift the throttle. It’s a coherent business model — and a fair one — but it means “free Sejda” is fundamentally a sample of paid Sejda, not the whole product.
Why Signegy Has No Hourly Cap
Signegy doesn’t run on a server. Every operation — sign, merge, split, compress, convert image-to-PDF, OCR, fill forms, the works — happens in JavaScript and WebAssembly in your browser tab. The libraries doing the work (pdf-lib, pdf.js, Tesseract.js, our own crypto wrappers) execute on your CPU, not ours.
The implication for pricing is simple: our marginal cost per user per operation is essentially zero. We pay the bandwidth to serve a static HTML page once, and your browser cache covers the rest. There’s no commercial pressure to throttle, because there’s no scaling cost to recover. The free PDF signer page covers this in more detail; the short version is that when nobody pays per operation, nobody needs a cap.
Tool-by-Tool Comparison
| Tool | Sejda | Signegy |
|---|---|---|
| Sign | Free 3/hour, server upload (online); desktop is local | Unlimited, browser-only with audit certificate |
| Merge | Free 3/hour, server upload | Unlimited, no file count limit, browser-only |
| Split | Free 3/hour, server upload | Unlimited, visual + range syntax |
| Compress | Free 3/hour, server-side | Unlimited, sliders for quality + DPI, browser-only |
| Image to PDF | Free 3/hour, server upload | Unlimited, drag-to-reorder, browser-only |
| Word to PDF | Free 3/hour, server-side | Browser-only via mammoth.js |
| OCR | English + 30+ languages on Premium | English only, browser-only |
| Rotate | Free, partly local | Unlimited, per-page |
| Fill forms | Free 3/hour | Browser-based, text + checkbox + dropdown + radio |
| Annotate | Free, mostly local | Free, browser-only |
| Page numbers | Premium only | Free, browser-only |
| Edit text in PDF | Yes (server-side) | Not available |
| PDF to Word | Yes (server-side) | Not available |
| PDF to Excel | Yes (server-side) | Not available |
| Audit certificate on signing | Premium tier | Included free, verify in-browser |
We’re missing PDF-to-Word, PDF-to-Excel, and full in-place text editing. Sejda has all three. We also have OCR, but only in English; Sejda has roughly 30+ languages on Premium. If multilingual OCR or office format conversion matters, Sejda is the right tool.
The Privacy Question, Properly Asked
Sejda’s privacy story is more nuanced than most competitors because some of their tools really are client-side. Their merge tool, for example, can run locally in the browser. Their compress tool generally does not. Their OCR runs server-side. Their PDF-to-Word runs server-side.
The problem is that the UI doesn’t surface this distinction. As a user, you drop a file, click a button, and a result comes back. Whether your file went to a Sejda server or stayed on your laptop is something you’d have to read their FAQ to know — and the answer changes by tool.
Signegy removes that ambiguity. Every tool, every operation, is browser-only. You can verify this yourself: open DevTools, go to the Network panel, drop a PDF, perform any operation. There are no POST requests with file payloads because there is no server doing the work. The architecture is covered on the private PDF signing page; the short version is that “client-side” isn’t a marketing line, it’s something you can check in 30 seconds.
For most documents — public reports, generic forms — server-side processing is fine. For sensitive documents — pre-signature contracts, tax filings, HR letters with compensation, anything with PII — the difference between “uploaded to Sejda’s servers” and “stayed in my browser tab” matters in a way that’s worth a moment’s thought.
When Sejda Is the Right Tool
Some honest cases where Sejda is the better pick:
You need PDF-to-Word or PDF-to-Excel. Signegy doesn’t have either. Sejda does, and the conversion quality is genuinely good (better than most free competitors).
You need multilingual OCR. Our OCR is English-only because each Tesseract language pack is a 5–30MB WebAssembly download — a multilingual picker would balloon the page weight. Sejda’s Premium OCR covers German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and more. If your scanned documents aren’t in English, Sejda is the right tool.
You need to edit text in an existing PDF. Genuine in-place text editing — changing a word in a paragraph and reflowing the line — requires either Acrobat-class software or server-side processing. Sejda handles this server-side. Signegy can’t.
You’re using Sejda Desktop already and it works. Sejda Desktop is local-only and removes the hourly cap. If you’ve paid for it and the workflow fits, switching is friction without much payoff.
When Signegy Is the Right Switch
The clearest cases:
The 3-tasks-per-hour cap keeps biting you. Two compresses and a merge in the same hour and you’re prompted for Premium. Signegy has no cap.
You don’t want files leaving your device. Sejda’s mixed architecture means some tools upload, some don’t, and you can’t easily tell which. Signegy is uniformly local — open DevTools and confirm.
You want the audit certificate without paying. Sejda gates certified audit trails behind Premium. Signegy generates a cryptographic audit certificate on every signature for free — and you can verify it in-browser without signing in.
You don’t want another account. Sejda’s free tier doesn’t strictly require an account for every tool, but Premium does and most of the upsell flow does. Signegy has no accounts at all.
You only need the common tools. Sign, merge, split, compress, image-to-PDF, word-to-PDF, OCR (English), rotate, crop, page numbers, watermarks, metadata edit, annotate, fill, repair — we have all of them, all free, all browser-only.
Getting Started
If you came here looking specifically for signing, sign a PDF takes about 30 seconds end-to-end and produces a downloadable PDF plus an audit certificate. If you’re comparison-shopping more broadly, the full tool list is the index. The compress PDF tool is the head-to-head with Sejda’s most popular operation — try both with the same file and compare output sizes and quality.
For other comparison angles, the Smallpdf alternative and iLovePDF alternative pages cover the same questions from those competitors’ angles.
Sejda pricing and feature claims accurate as of May 2026. Visit sejda.com for the latest information.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Signegy actually free, or is there a hidden cap like Sejda's 3 tasks per hour?
Free, with no caps. There's no per-hour limit, no per-day limit, no file count limit, and no file size ceiling beyond what your browser can hold in memory. Signegy runs in your browser using your CPU, so we don't pay per operation — which means there's no commercial reason to throttle you.
Does Sejda actually upload my files?
Some Sejda tools are client-side, others are server-side, and Sejda doesn't make this distinction obvious in the UI. Compress, edit, OCR and most format conversions go to their servers; merge and a few simpler ops can run locally. Signegy is uniformly browser-only — there's no ambiguity, no upload, ever.
Where is Sejda legitimately better than Signegy?
Two areas. First, format conversion: Sejda has PDF-to-Word and PDF-to-Excel that genuinely work, and we don't. Second, OCR languages: Sejda's OCR supports dozens of languages on Premium; our OCR is English-only because each Tesseract language pack adds 5–30MB of WASM download. If multilingual OCR or PDF-to-Word is core to your workflow, Sejda is the right pick.
Can I switch from Sejda to Signegy without re-learning anything?
Yes. The drop-PDF-do-thing-download-PDF flow is identical. There's no Sejda account state to migrate (and no Signegy account to create). Bookmark signegy.com and the muscle memory carries over within a day. The tool URLs even read similarly: /sign-pdf-online, /merge-pdf-online, /split-pdf-online, /compress-pdf-online.
What about Sejda's PDF editor — does Signegy have anything equivalent?
Partial. Signegy has annotate, fill forms, add page numbers, add watermarks, edit metadata, crop pages, and rotate pages — covering most of what people use Sejda's editor for. What we don't have is true text editing of existing PDF body content (changing a paragraph in place). That's a hard problem in any browser-only setting; Sejda's server-side approach handles it better.