About FileCrucible
FileCrucible is a free file converter that runs the conversion on a server we operate, rather than handing your documents to a third-party API.
How it works
When you upload a file it is written to an isolated directory tied to a single anonymous session. The appropriate open-source tool is invoked to produce your output, you download it, and the whole directory is removed automatically within 24 hours. There is no account system, so there is nothing linking one visit to another.
The tools doing the work
Credit where it is due — FileCrucible is a front end over a stack of open-source projects that each represent decades of effort:
- FFmpeg — audio and video
- LibreOffice — office documents and spreadsheets
- ImageMagick, GraphicsMagick and libvips — raster images
- Pandoc — document markup
- Calibre — e-books
- Inkscape, resvg and Potrace — vector graphics and tracing
- Assimp — 3D models
- ConvertX — the AGPL-3.0 engine orchestrating all of the above
What we deliberately do not do
- No accounts, so no names, emails or passwords.
- No analytics, session recording or fingerprinting.
- No inspection of file contents, and no training on your data.
- No selling of anything to anyone.
How this is funded
Advertising, shown only with your consent. That is what keeps the service free with no upload quota and no watermarking. There is no paid tier and no upsell. If you decline advertising, the site works identically — you simply see no ads.
Honest limitations
Some conversions are inherently imperfect, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. PDF to Word is a reconstruction, not a translation. Raster to vector is a redrawing that suits line art and ruins photographs. Scanned documents need OCR, which we do not perform. Each guide explains where its particular conversion falls down.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a file size limit?
Uploads are capped per file to keep the queue responsive for everyone. The current limit is shown on the converter itself. Very large video files are the usual thing to run into it.
How long are my files kept?
Uploads and converted results are deleted automatically within 24 hours, and you can delete a job yourself as soon as you have downloaded it. Nothing is retained beyond that window.
Do you look at the contents of my files?
No. Files are written to disk, passed to the relevant conversion tool, and removed on the schedule above. They are not inspected, indexed, or shared with third parties.
Do I need an account?
No. Each visit gets an isolated anonymous session, so your conversions are not visible to anyone else and there is nothing to sign up for.
Why did my conversion fail?
Most failures are a corrupt or truncated source file, a DRM-protected e-book, or a format pair the underlying tool does not genuinely support. The error shown on the results row is passed straight through from the conversion tool.
Can you extract text from a scanned PDF?
Not currently. That requires optical character recognition, which is a different technology from format conversion. A scanned PDF converted to Word gives you a document containing page images.