API Terms
The short version: build with the API through your own verified account, keep your key secret, mind your credits — and your output documents are yours. These terms add to our Terms & Conditions.
1. What these API Terms cover
Free PDF Editor offers a programmatic interface (the “API”) for converting, processing and inspecting PDFs from your own applications. The API is a preview: it is live and usable today — currently one endpoint, which reports your account, key and credit status — and more endpoints follow. The API preview and your credentials live in your account area. By calling the API — directly or through an integration — you accept these API Terms in addition to the general Terms & Conditions and the Privacy Policy.
2. Accounts and access
- Account required. API access belongs to a Free PDF Editor account on the Commercial plan, and only to verified accounts — the 6-digit code sent to your email address at sign-up must be entered first.
- One account, one responsible owner. The account holder is responsible for every call made with the account's keys.
- Authentication. Requests identify themselves with the API key
in the
Authorizationheader (Bearer). Requests without a valid key are rejected with a JSON error.
3. API keys
- Commercial plan only. API keys are part of the Commercial plan — free accounts don't have them. Ask us to enable it on your account, and keys unlock in My Account.
- How many. Your plan sets how many keys the account can create (1, 2 or 5 over its lifetime, per the plans page), with one key working at a time. Creating a new key requires revoking the running one; a revoked key is counted as used and never gives the slot back — apply with us if you need more.
- Revoking is immediate. Anything still using a revoked key stops working at that moment — that is also how you rotate a key that may have leaked.
- Keys are secrets. Keep your key confidential and server-side — never ship it inside client apps, browsers, public repositories or screenshots. You are responsible for calls made with your key.
- No shared keys. Do not share a key across teams or people, resell access, or create accounts to work around limits or bans.
4. Credits, charges and fair use
- Welcome credits. New accounts start with 100 free credits. Calls spend credits according to the published costs — status and simple tasks cost 1 credit; heavier operations (merge, compress, convert) cost 10.
- Charged before work. A call is charged when it is accepted. If your balance is empty the API answers with an insufficient credits error and does no processing.
- Free preview, no cash value. Welcome credits are free, are not transferable, have no cash value, and unused credits create no entitlement or refund right. Paid credits are added to your balance only after the payment is verified, roll over month to month and never expire — and while the payment gateway is in sandbox, purchases are simulated and no money moves.
- Fair use. We publish and may adjust rate limits (requests per minute, pages per job, file size) to protect the Service. Automated retry storms, parallel flooding or deliberately wasteful patterns are not “fair use” even within a quota.
- Commercial use is the paid path. Commercial API keys are sold as monthly or yearly plans starting at 10,000 credits a month on the plans page; anything custom is arranged with us directly — contact us via pdfedit@freepdfeditor.recollem.me to apply.
5. What you may build
- Yes: integrate PDF processing into your own products and internal workflows — including commercial products — within your credits and limits.
- Yes: use API output commercially — the documents the API produces from your files are yours, exactly as with the website tools.
- No: reselling or rebranding the API itself as a competing PDF service, proxying it to third parties as your own offering, or presenting it as your own infrastructure without a written agreement with us.
6. Prohibited uses
- Unlawful content, mass infringement or processing material you have no right to process.
- Spam, surveillance of individuals, or harvesting data about people without a lawful basis.
- Attempting to bypass authentication, limits or metering; probing or attacking the API or its infrastructure.
- Load-testing beyond your published limits without written permission from us.
The acceptable-use rules of the general Terms apply to every byte you send through the API.
7. Data and privacy in the API
- Files you send to the API are processed the same way as website uploads: unguessable ids, no browsing or listing, and automatic deletion after 2 hours. Do not use the API as storage — it is a processing pipeline, not a file host.
- You are the controller of the content you submit. If your application processes other people's documents, you are responsible for having a lawful basis and for your own privacy notices toward those people.
- Your responsibility does not end at the API boundary: if your users' files flow through your app into our API, you must tell your users that their files are processed by a third-party service (this one) and link to our Privacy Policy.
8. Reliability, preview status and changes
The API is provided “as is”, like the rest of the Service, with no availability guarantee. As a preview it will change: endpoints, response shapes, credit costs and limits may evolve as new capabilities arrive. Where a change is material we will announce it in the account area or the API documentation. We recommend versioning your integration and handling errors gracefully — and validating output before relying on it in production.
9. Suspension and revocation
We may throttle, suspend or revoke API access — with notice where practical — if your usage risks the Service (abuse, attacks, limit evasion, unlawful content), or if your account is closed. You may stop using the API at any time; revoking your keys or deleting your account cancels its API access immediately.
10. No warranty, limited liability
The API comes with the same disclaimers as the website: no warranties, and a limitation of liability as set out in sections 14 and 15 of the Terms & Conditions. You are responsible for validating API output before relying on it in production.
11. Governing law
These API Terms follow the same governing law as the general Terms: the laws of India, with exclusive jurisdiction of the courts with competence over West Bengal, India — without limiting any mandatory protections you may have where you live.
12. Contact
Questions about API access, limits or partnerships: get in touch via pdfedit@freepdfeditor.recollem.me.
Free PDF Editor — a QEPL Technologies brandNew Town Business District,
Rajarhat, Kolkata – 700156,
West Bengal, India