Terms of service
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These are the rules for using PencoPDF. They are short on purpose. Using the editor means you accept them.
1. What the service is
PencoPDF is a web application that edits PDF files: it changes existing text while keeping the font already embedded in the file, edits text on scanned pages using OCR, and does the usual jobs — text boxes, whiteout, images, highlight, underline, strikeout, signatures, rotating, deleting and reordering pages, merging, splitting and compressing. Your file is uploaded to our servers so the engine can do that work.
2. Your files stay yours
We claim no ownership of anything you upload and no licence to it beyond the obvious one: permission to store and process your file for as long as it takes to do the job you asked for. Nothing else. We do not read your documents, share them, or use them to train anything.
You need to have the right to edit what you upload. Do not upload documents that are illegal, that you have no permission to change, or that you are using the service to forge.
3. Files are deleted after a day — keep your own copy
Every document, and everything derived from it, is deleted 24 hours after your last action on it. Having it open in a browser tab counts, so a long editing session is never interrupted. A document you have paid $2 for is kept for 24 hours from the payment, so you can come back for it. There is also a "Delete now" button. This is deliberate and it is not reversible: PencoPDF is an editor, not storage. There are no backups of your documents, and we cannot recover one for you. Download your result, and keep the original somewhere safe.
4. What is free, and what is paid
Editing is free and unlimited. You may open as many documents as you like and change them as much as you like without paying and without an account. Money is asked for at one point only: downloading the finished file.
| Editing (free) | One document ($2) | Yearly ($19) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Documents you can edit | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Downloading the finished file | No | That document | Unlimited |
| Maximum file size | 10 MB | 10 MB | 100 MB |
| Maximum pages | 30 | 30 | 500 |
| OCR on a scanned document | First 5 pages | Every page of it | Every page |
| How long the file is kept | 24 hours | 24 hours | 24 hours once paid |
| Watermark | None | None | None |
A document is one file you open in the editor. Paying $2 unlocks that one file: you may download it as many times as you like while it lasts, and its text is read on every page. Opening a different file is a different document.
We can change these limits and prices. A price change never applies to something you have already paid for, and if a change makes things worse we will say so before it happens, not afterwards.
5. Paying
There are two ways to pay, and you are told which one applies before you start work: $2 once to download a single document, or $19 a year for unlimited downloads and the higher limits above.
Payments are handled by Lemon Squeezy, which is the merchant of record: they are the seller on your receipt, and we never see your card number. Prices are in US dollars and exclude any tax that applies where you live, which they will show you at checkout. The $2 is a one-off charge and nothing renews from it. The yearly plan renews automatically at the end of each year until you cancel.
6. Cancelling and refunds
Cancelling is one click in the billing portal. No email to send, no support ticket, no retention offer. You keep the yearly plan until the end of the year you have already paid for, and after that downloads go back to $2 each. Editing stays free either way. Your account and your documents are not deleted by cancelling. A $2 payment is a one-off, so there is nothing to cancel.
If you want a refund, ask at support@pencopdf.com and we will give you one, whether it was $2 or $19. You do not have to justify it. If you are a consumer in the EU you also have a statutory 14-day right of withdrawal, and nothing here reduces it.
If a yearly payment fails — an expired card over a weekend, say — you keep the plan for 14 days while the payment is retried, so a billing hiccup never locks you out mid-job.
7. Fair use
Please do not:
- upload illegal material, or documents you have no right to alter;
- use the service to create forged or fraudulent documents;
- attack the service, probe it for holes in a way that degrades it for other people, or try to get at other people's documents;
- drive it with scripts at a volume that spoils it for everyone else — if you want bulk processing, run your own copy of the server, which the licence explicitly allows.
If you do any of that we may suspend or close your account. If we close a paid account for this reason we will refund the unused part of your period.
9. Availability
We try hard to keep the service up, but we do not promise an uptime figure. There will be maintenance, and occasionally there will be failures. We may change features or retire the service; if we retire it, we will tell yearly subscribers in advance and refund whatever is unused.
10. Liability
The service is provided as it is. Check the output before you rely on it — particularly on scanned pages, where OCR can misread a character. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, and our total liability to you is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim.
None of that limits liability that cannot be limited by law: death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, or any consumer right you have that cannot be signed away.
11. Changes to these terms
If we change these terms we update the date at the top. If a change materially affects you, we will email yearly subscribers before it takes effect. Carrying on using the service after a change means you accept it.
12. Law and contact
These terms are governed by German law. If you are a consumer, you keep the protection of the mandatory law of the country you live in, and you can bring a claim there.
Questions: support@pencopdf.com.