Crop or redact? The one question that decides it: does the content have to be gone?
Crop a PDF to change what is shown; redact to remove what is there. Why a crop still carries hidden content, and how to verify a redaction.
UnboundPDF is a free suite of 54 PDF and image tools that run entirely in your browser — merge, split, compress, edit text, OCR in 126 languages, redact, sign, convert and archive to PDF/A. Your document is read and written by the page on your own device; there is no document-upload endpoint in the core tools, no account, no watermark and no daily cap. Every result can be checked — with the Network tab, or with the Document Passport the Workspace writes for a chain of steps.
The rule. If the content must no longer exist in the file, redact. If you only want the page displayed differently, crop. A crop is reversible by any reader; a verified redaction is not.
| Crop | Redact | |
|---|---|---|
| What changes | The crop box — the displayed area | The page content — text removed, region cleared |
| Content outside / under | Still in the file | Gone, verified on the output |
| Reversible | Yes, in any reader | No |
| Text stays selectable elsewhere | Yes | Yes |
| Right for | Margins, phone reading, layout | Account numbers, names, anything confidential |
The demonstration
Crop a footer away, open the result, select all, paste into a text editor: the footer's text is there. Redact the same footer, repeat: nothing. That thirty-second test is the whole argument, and it is why the crop tool says on its page that hidden is not deleted.
When crop is the right tool
Scanned books with wide margins, slides with a bar you do not need, a form whose edges confuse a phone reader. The content is not secret; you want a cleaner page.
When redact is the only tool
Anything a recipient must not be able to recover. Redact PDF removes the text, verifies on the finished bytes, names pages it could not fully clear; the verifier checks any redacted file from any tool.
Frequently asked questions
Can I crop and then redact?
Yes — crop for layout, redact for content; verify the redaction on the output.
Does cropping remove metadata?
No. Edit Metadata clears author and title fields.
Is a cropped PDF smaller?
Not meaningfully — the content is still in the file.
Try it yourself
Free, private, no account. Runs entirely in your browser.
