PDFOnly vs Sejda — pros and cons

Sejda is a more technical, less mass-market PDF toolkit — it has a desktop app and is well-regarded for advanced PDF editing. Here's how it compares to PDFOnly.

## TL;DR

Sejda has stronger interactive editing capabilities (their desktop editor is excellent for marking up text and shapes). PDFOnly has more tools overall, better AI/LLM workflows, easier sharing (web-only, no install), and self-hosting. Sejda's free tier has a 3-task-per-hour and 50-MB-per-file cap — generous but constraining for power users.

## Free tier

**Sejda:** 3 tasks per hour, max 50 MB or 200 pages per task. Browser-based.

**PDFOnly:** No hourly task limit. 100 MB upload (200 MB Pro). Browser-based.

## Tool coverage

Sejda is strong on: - **Visual editing** — their text editor is excellent. You can edit existing text in the PDF, not just overlay on top. - **Form filling** — comparable to ours. - **Standard ops** — compress, merge, split, convert, OCR.

PDFOnly is stronger on: - **AI/RAG** — PDF-to-Markdown, OCR-to-Markdown chain. - **Legal** — PDF/A, Bates numbering, visual diff. - **Self-hosting** — Sejda has a desktop app, but no self-hosted SaaS.

Visual editing on PDFOnly is more limited today than Sejda's. We have Edit PDF (text and rectangle overlays) but no in-place text editing — that's a hard problem and we focus elsewhere.

## Privacy

Sejda's desktop app is genuinely client-side — files never leave your machine. Excellent for sensitive documents.

PDFOnly's SaaS is server-side processing. Self-hosted is the equivalent path for sensitive workflows.

## Pricing

Sejda: free with hourly cap, Web subscription for unlimited browser use, Desktop subscription separately.

PDFOnly: free with no hourly cap; Pro for higher limits; self-host for $0/mo (your VPS cost).

## Bottom line

If you do heavy in-place PDF text editing, Sejda's desktop app is the right tool. If you want web-based with AI/RAG features, more legal/archival tools, and self-hosting as an option, PDFOnly fits better.