I built 74 free tools that run entirely in the browser — no uploads, no signup

Hamza Ali Basra — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 16:56:58 +0000

Every day, people upload private files — contracts, payslips, family photos — to random websites just to merge a PDF or shrink an image. I kept thinking: the browser can already do all of this locally. So I built ToolPixi: 74 free tools that run entirely on your device.

The collection covers the everyday jobs: PDF merge, split and compress; image compress-to-KB (useful for forms that demand an exact file size), converters between JPG, PNG and WEBP; a QR code generator; and calculators for dates, ages, percentages and more.

How it works, technically:

Everything is client-side. PDFs are assembled with JavaScript libraries in the page; images are drawn to a canvas and re-encoded at the size you choose. Your file never travels to a server — there is no upload step to remove, it simply never happens.

Static hosting. The site is plain HTML/CSS/JS on GitHub Pages. No backend means no database of user files exists anywhere, which is the strongest privacy policy a tools site can have.

One page per tool. Every tool has its own URL with its own explanation, which is how people actually search ('compress image to 50kb', 'merge pdf').

The trade-off of client-side processing is that very large files depend on the visitor's device — a fair price for never handing your documents to a stranger's server.

All 74 tools are free, no signup, no watermarks: https://toolpixi.com

I built a free directory of 86 AI tools — here's how it's organized (and what I'd do differently)

Hamza Ali Basra — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 16:56:10 +0000

There are thousands of AI tools now, and most directories are either scraped lists or pay-to-rank ads. I wanted something simpler: a free directory where every entry is actually checked.

Grab AI Tool (https://grabaitool.com) lists 86 AI tools across 10 categories — writing, image, video, audio, code, design, marketing, and more. For every tool I record the things people actually ask before signing up: what the free plan really includes, where it stops, and what the paid plan costs. Those notes are checked and updated regularly, because pricing pages change constantly.

Three parts of the build were worth the effort:

The Finder Quiz. Instead of browsing categories, visitors answer a few questions about their task and get matched to a tool in about a minute. It is the most-used page on the site.

The Cost Calculator. AI subscriptions quietly add up. The calculator lets you stack the tools you pay for and see the real monthly total before renewing anything.

Boring tech, on purpose. The whole site is static — generated from structured data files, hosted on GitHub Pages. No database, no server costs, pages load instantly. When a price changes, I update one data entry and regenerate.

What I would do differently: start the quiz on day one instead of adding it later, and write the pricing-check routine before the list grew past 50 tools — checking 86 entries by hand teaches you that lesson fast.

The directory is free, no signup: https://grabaitool.com — if you try the quiz, I would genuinely like to know if the match it picked was the right one.

DEV Community: Hamza Ali Basra

I built 74 free tools that run entirely in the browser — no uploads, no signup

I built a free directory of 86 AI tools — here's how it's organized (and what I'd do differently)