CloudConvert alternatives that keep files on your Mac

CloudConvert is a website that converts files. You upload one, pick a format, and download the result. Its home page says it handles 212 formats across 11 kinds: documents, images, video, audio, spreadsheets, slides, ebooks, archives, vector, CAD and fonts. There's an API for developers too.

On CloudConvert's pricing, the free plan gives 10 conversion credits a day, files up to 1 GB, and 5 minutes of processing each. Paid credits come as one-off packages that never expire, or a monthly subscription, which is up to 50% cheaper per credit but resets each month. Conversions cost different amounts: a general one is 1 credit, Office to PDF is 2, and PDF to Office is 4, plus more for each minute past the first.

On privacy, its security page says files are kept only for processing and deleted straight after, that the company holds ISO 27001 certification, and that it runs in the processing region you choose on providers like AWS. The home page adds that it doesn't sell or mine your file data. That's a careful setup. It's still an upload: the file leaves your Mac and is opened on someone else's computer.

We make Koi, so read this with that in mind. Koi is first below because it's ours, and it covers far fewer formats than CloudConvert. Every fact about another app comes from that app's own site, checked October 21, 2026. We didn't run tests, so nothing here says which app keeps a layout best.

• The file is private: a contract, a payslip, a medical letter or a client's slides. On your Mac, it never leaves.
• The free plan runs out. Ten credits a day goes fast when PDF to Word costs 4.
• Big files are slow to upload and download again, and the free plan stops at 1 GB.
• Your Mac already has most of what you need: Preview, Finder's Quick Actions, Pages, and free apps like LibreOffice.

With CloudConvert:

1. Open cloudconvert.com and click Select File, or drop the PDF on the page.
2. Pick DOCX as the format.
3. Start the conversion. The PDF is uploaded and converted on CloudConvert's servers.
4. Download the Word file.

With Koi, without uploading anything:

1. Start dragging the PDF from Finder or the desktop, then press and hold Shift.
2. Drop it on Convert. The wheel turns into DOCX, PAGES, PPTX, XLSX, JPG, PNG, TXT and MD.
3. Click DOCX. The Word file is saved beside the PDF and shown in Finder.

Know what you get. Koi reads the PDF's text into paragraphs, with bigger lines as headings, and puts a page with almost no words, like a scan or a chart, in as a picture. The PDF's layout, columns and fonts don't come along. For the other way round, see how to convert Word to PDF on a Mac.

Converting is never perfect, and it's better to know the limits before you send the result to someone. Here is what Koi keeps and drops, from the way each conversion is built:

• Word to PDF: real text with working links, on the document's own paper size, with Word's styles, headings, lists, tables and pictures. Headers, footers, footnotes and text boxes are left out, and fonts your Mac doesn't have become the nearest it does.
• PDF to Word, text or Markdown: the PDF's words in paragraphs, bigger lines as headings. Not its layout, columns or fonts, and not the pictures inside a page of words.
• PDF to Excel: a sheet for each page, words far apart on a line in cells of their own, numbers as numbers.
• PDF to PowerPoint: a slide for each page, as a picture you can't edit as text.
• PDF to JPG or PNG: each page at 200 pixels to an inch, one beside the PDF or several in a folder.
• A spreadsheet to anything: every sheet's values as they last worked out, not the formulas. A workbook of several sheets becomes a folder of CSVs.
• An EPUB: its chapters in order with headings, emphasis, links and pictures. A book with DRM can't be converted.

Whatever tool you use, CloudConvert included, open the result and check it before you send it.

It depends on the file and the service. CloudConvert is one of the more careful ones: deleted after processing, ISO 27001 certified, a processing region you choose, and a promise not to sell or mine your file data. Plenty of converter sites say much less. Before you upload anything to any of them, ask:

• Would it matter if this file leaked? A menu, no. A passport scan, a payslip or a client's contract, yes.
• Does the site say how long it keeps files, and where?
• Is there a free way on your Mac? For images and Office files, there usually is.

Koi's Shift wheel reads the file where it is and writes the copy beside it, with nothing uploaded. Converting to Pages hands the file to Apple's Pages on the same Mac, and macOS asks you once whether Koi may do that.

From each app's own site. “Not listed” means the site doesn't say.

• A HEIC photo to JPEG? Finder's Convert Image, free.
• Word, Excel or PowerPoint files to edit and save? LibreOffice, free.
• A pile of videos or audio files? Permute or HandBrake.
• An ebook library? Calibre.
• PDF to Word, Word to PDF, slides to pictures, a sheet to CSV and the rest, with one drag and nothing uploaded? Koi.

Koi's guides walk through the common ones: Excel to CSV, merging PDFs and opening 7z and RAR files. The Shift wheel is on every plan; see the plans.