Privacy
Most of DocumentCloud.ai runs in your browser. The PDF tools and the editor work on your file in the browser tab and don't send it to us. Two things send data to a server, and only when you use them: My documents and your account.
Last updated November 2, 2026
At a glance
| PDF tools and the editor | Run in your browser tab. Your file isn't sent to us. |
|---|---|
| OCR | Runs in your browser tab. The engine and English model load from this site; other languages download a model from jsDelivr. Your scan isn't sent. |
| The assistant | Not available on this site right now, so no document text is sent to an AI model. |
| My documents | Stores the PDFs you choose to save, in your account. |
| Account | Stores your name, email address and a hash of your password. You can export or delete it yourself. |
| Cookies | One sign-in cookie, only when you're signed in. No advertising or analytics cookies. |
PDF tools and the editor
When you open a PDF in a tool or the editor, your browser reads the file from your disk into this tab’s memory. The work happens there, in JavaScript and WebAssembly: pdf.js renders pages, pdf-lib edits, merges and encrypts, and Tesseract recognizes text. The result is saved to your downloads. The file isn’t sent to our servers, and closing or reloading the tab clears it from the page.
Passwords you type into Protect PDF or Unlock PDF are used in your browser only. Signatures you save in the editor are stored in this browser (up to 8) until you delete them; they aren’t sent to us.
You can check this yourself: open your browser’s developer tools, go to the Network tab, run a tool, and look at the requests. See Security for details.
OCR downloads
The first time you recognize text, your browser downloads the OCR engine and the language’s model and caches them. The engine and the English model, about 7 MB together, are served from this site. Models for the other 25 languages, up to 3 MB each, are downloaded from jsDelivr, a public content delivery network, which receives your IP address and the name of the file requested, as with any web request. Nothing about your document is part of these downloads.
If the assistant is enabled
The assistant (Chat with PDF and the editor’s Assistant) isn’t available on this site right now, so no document text is sent to an AI model. This section describes what happens if it’s enabled on this site.
It would be the one feature that sends document content off your device. Text is extracted from the PDF in your browser. When you send a question, the request goes to our server, which forwards it to the AI model this site uses. Each request contains:
- Document text: all of it when the documents total 60,000 characters or less (roughly 15 to 20 pages); for longer documents, the passages that best match your question.
- For summaries, the full text, up to 600,000 characters.
- The file name, your question, and the earlier questions and answers in that conversation.
Before you send, the panel shows how many pages and how much text will go, and each question keeps a record of what was sent. The PDF file itself isn’t uploaded.
Our server doesn’t store the document text, your questions or the answers. To enforce usage limits it records, per account and day, the number of requests and the amount of text processed. The AI provider receives the request and processes it under its API terms, which govern whether and how long it keeps the data. We don’t use your documents or questions to train AI models.
My documents
My documents is optional and needs a free account. A PDF is uploaded only when you choose Save to My documents or upload it on the My documents page. We store the file and its name, size, page count and dates, so you can open it again on any device. Files are limited to 100 MB each.
Stored files aren’t end-to-end encrypted: our server can read them, because it sends them back to you when you open them. Only your account can list or open your files. Deleting a document removes it from our storage.
Your account
An account holds your name, your email address, the date you signed up and a bcrypt hash of your password. We never store the password itself.
On the Account page you can change your password, export your data as a ZIP file (your account details and every document in My documents) and delete your account. Deleting it removes your account and everything in My documents straight away.
If you use Forgot password, we email a reset link to the address on the account. The email goes out through our email delivery provider. The link works once and expires after 30 minutes, and we store only a hash of it.
Cookies and browser storage
| dc_session cookie | Set when you sign in, to keep you signed in for up to 30 days. HTTP-only, so page scripts can't read it. Removed when you sign out. |
|---|---|
| Theme | Your light or dark choice, in this browser's local storage. |
| Saved signatures | Up to 8, in this browser's local storage, until you delete them. |
| Your name for comments | The name you enter in the Comments panel, in this browser's local storage. It's written into the comments you add, so people you send the file to see it. If you're signed in and haven't entered one, your account name is used. |
| Custom stamps | The last 6 custom stamp labels you used, in this browser's local storage. |
| Your details for forms | The name, email, phone, address, company and date format you save under Your details in Fill & sign, in this browser's local storage, until you select Clear details. They're only used to fill in forms in the editor. |
| OCR cache | The OCR engine and language models, cached by your browser. |
| Recent tools | The last 5 tools you used, for the command bar, in this browser's local storage. |
| Batch recipes | Recipes you save in Batch process, up to 30, in this browser's local storage. Passwords from a Protect step aren't saved. |
| Offline copy | A service worker caches the site's pages and scripts so the app opens without a connection. Your documents and account data aren't cached. |
We don’t use advertising cookies, analytics cookies or third-party trackers.
Server logs and abuse limits
To limit abuse, the server keeps your IP address in memory when you sign in, sign up, change or reset your password, and forgets it about an hour after your last request. It isn’t written to our database. Our hosting provider may keep standard request logs, such as IP address, page address and time, for security and troubleshooting.
What we don't do
- Sell or rent your data.
- Show ads or share data with advertisers.
- Look at the files you process with the tools; they never reach us.
- Train AI models on your documents.
Questions
Email support@documentcloud.ai. For how the system is built and protected, see Security. The rules for using the site are in the Terms of use.