Password Protect PDF — Add or Remove a PDF Password Free

Switch to the Lock tab, drop a PDF, enter a password (and confirm it), and click Protect my PDF. The output is an AES-128 encrypted PDF that requires the password to open in any PDF viewer. Distribute the locked file freely and share the password through a separate channel.

AES-128 is a widely used encryption standard. With a strong password (12+ characters mixing letters, numbers and symbols) guessing the password is impractical, though no protection is absolute. Weak passwords can be brute-forced — use a passphrase or a password manager-generated string.

Yes — switch to the Unlock tab, drop the locked PDF, enter the password you already know, and choose Unlock my PDF. The output is the same PDF without encryption. This tool does NOT crack unknown passwords; it requires the correct password to decrypt.

The tool reports "Wrong password" and refuses to produce output. There is no brute-force, no retry penalty, no logging of attempts. If you don't know the password, contact the document originator — there is no legitimate way to bypass strong PDF encryption.

Yes — the password travels over HTTPS as part of the request, is used to encrypt or decrypt the file, and is never stored with your document or written to our logs. The locked or unlocked PDF itself is kept only so you can download it, then removed under our Security policy — unless you explicitly share a result, which keeps it at a public link anyone who has it can open without automatic expiration while Pixoate provides the sharing service. For ultra-sensitive workflows where even transient transit is unacceptable, use a desktop tool like qpdf or pikepdf locally.

Yes — AES-128 PDF encryption is supported by every major PDF viewer: Adobe Acrobat, Apple Preview, Chrome's built-in viewer, Foxit, Edge's PDF viewer, and mobile readers on iOS and Android.

Currently the tool uses a single user password (open-the-file password). Advanced PDF security separates the user password (open) from the owner password (allow/restrict printing, copying, editing) — that workflow needs a desktop tool. For most use cases, the user password is what people mean by "password-protect this PDF".

Preview and download the clean standard result without creating an account. Files can be up to 20MB on Free, 50MB with Premium or 120MB with Pro. Use it for contracts, NDAs, tax returns and any other document that needs to be sent over email without snoopers reading it.

Open the Lock tab, drop your PDF, enter and confirm a password, then click Protect my PDF. The file is encrypted with AES-128 so it cannot be opened without that password in any PDF viewer. Share the locked file freely and send the password through a separate channel. To remove protection from a file you own, use the Unlock tab with the correct password.

Yes — click the eye icon inside the password field to toggle between masked and plain text. This is useful for confirming a long, randomly generated password was typed correctly, since a typo in the field means you could lock yourself out of your own file.

The confirm-password field catches typos before they get baked into the encrypted file — if the two fields don't match, the tool blocks the lock and shows "Passwords do not match" instead of producing a PDF you can never open again. Unlock mode only asks once because you're supplying a password that already exists.

Type the password once, retype it in Confirm password, then click the eye icon to reveal both fields and visually check they're identical before clicking Lock PDF. Since AES-128 encryption has no recovery backdoor, this quick check with all three controls is the only safety net if you mistype a long, complex password.

Choose Lock mode, upload your PDF and type the password twice to confirm it — the file is encrypted with AES-128 and downloads ready to share, with no Acrobat or signup needed. The same tool has an Unlock mode that removes a password you already know. Locking and unlocking are free, and files are deleted automatically after processing.

Yes — Pixoate supports batch and bulk processing. Switch to Batch mode, add up to 60 PDFs on Premium or 200 on Pro, set your options once, and every PDF is processed with the same settings before you download a single ZIP. Bulk processing is a Premium feature; the output uses the same quality and settings as single mode.

Yes — with bulk processing you configure the settings a single time and they apply to every item in the batch — up to 60 PDFs on Premium or 200 on Pro. There is no need to repeat the setup per item, and Temporary uploaded and generated files are processed securely and deleted automatically.

Almost always one of three things. The file is over the 20 MB free upload limit — Premium takes 50 MB and Pro 120 MB. The format is not one this tool accepts, so check the list shown on the upload panel. Or the file is not really the format its name says: renaming a file does not change what is inside it, and that is the reason a valid-looking PDF gets refused.

Page content is preserved, but anything that depended on the original file being interactive can behave differently — form fields, layers and annotations may be flattened into the page depending on the operation you ran. If you need the fields to stay fillable, do the flattening step last. Keep the untouched original until you have checked the output end to end.

PDF Password supports free standard use within the published processing allowances. Free downloads are clean — no watermark. No signup is required for standard tool use. Photo effects and AI edits have a web-size limit on Free, with the original-resolution result available through Premium or one credit. Crop, resize, rotate, compress and convert stay full size. Premium supports batches of up to 60 files, with the applicable plan limits shown before processing.

No — PDF Password runs in the browser on desktop and phone. There is nothing to install, no trial to start, and no license to buy before you can see whether it does what you need. Try it on the file you are actually stuck with rather than a sample.

Unlock the file first with its current password, then upload the unlocked copy on the Lock (encrypt) tab and set the new password. The first step needs the current password, because the tool cannot reset one that has been lost.

This tool accepts PDF files only. Convert the document to a PDF first with Word to PDF or Excel to PDF, then lock the PDF here. The protected copy is a PDF, not a Word or Excel file.

It stops people without the password from opening the file at all. Anyone who has the password can open it normally, and this tool sets no printing, copying or editing restrictions, so share the password only with people you trust to work with the document.

Nothing changes in your original. The tool creates a new protected copy and names it after your file with -locked added at the end, so you keep an unprotected version too. Store that version carefully if it holds sensitive information.

A long, unique one. A phrase of several unrelated words, or a random string of 12 or more characters, works better than a name, a date or a word with a number added. Avoid reusing the password of an account, and store it in a password manager.