I Built 44 Free Browser Tools (and Didn't Upload a Single File to My Server)

Saeid — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 13:21:27 +0000

You know that moment when you need to quickly compress an image,
convert a PNG to JPG, or generate a secure password —
and every tool you find either wants you to create an account,
slaps a watermark on your file, or just feels... sketchy?

Yeah. I got tired of that too.

So I built Plix.Tools — a collection of
44 free browser-based tools and games where nothing ever leaves
your device. No upload. No account. No watermarks. No "free trial
— upgrade to remove limits." Just tools that work.

How it works (the nerdy part)

Everything runs client-side in vanilla JavaScript. When you compress
an image, the Canvas API does the work entirely in your browser.
When you generate a SHA-256 hash, the Web Crypto API handles it
locally. When you format JSON, it's just JSON.parse() and
JSON.stringify() — no server involved at all.

The architecture is embarrassingly simple: pure HTML, CSS, and JS
hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Zero backend. Zero database. Zero
server costs.

This means two things:

Your data never goes anywhere (seriously — open DevTools, check the Network tab)
It's fast — no round-trips to a server means results are instant

What's in there?

🖼️ Image & PDF Tools

Compress, resize, convert between PNG/JPG/WebP, embed images as
Base64, merge images to PDF. All canvas-based, all local.

🧮 Calculators

Tip & bill splitter, loan & mortgage calculator with full
amortisation schedule, BMI, age calculator (down to the second),
percentage, unit converter, and a currency converter with live
exchange rates.

⚙️ Developer Tools

JSON formatter with tree view, SHA-256/MD5/SHA-512 hash generator,
AES-256 encrypt/decrypt, Unix timestamp converter, IP & subnet
calculator, binary/hex/octal converter, URL encoder/decoder, regex
tester with live highlighting... the usual developer toolkit, just
without the annoying ads and account walls.

✍️ Productivity

Word & character counter (yes, it correctly handles standalone
punctuation — . doesn't count as a word), text case converter
(camelCase, snake_case, kebab-case and 12 more), Pomodoro timer
with task tracking, and a WPM typing speed test.

🎮 Games — yes, actual games

This is the part I'm most proud of and least expected to ship.

Wordle — Unlimited rounds,
no daily limit, 500+ word pool, full on-screen keyboard. The
original only gives you one word per day. Mine gives you as many
as you want. Fight me.

2048 — The classic sliding
tile puzzle. Arrow keys on desktop, swipe on mobile. Best score
saved locally.

Minesweeper — Easy
(9×9), Medium (16×16), Hard (16×30). First click is always safe.
Mine icons rendered as SVG — no emoji policy on the site.

Reaction Time Test
— Click when the screen turns green. Measures your reaction time
in milliseconds. Anti-cheat: clicking early resets the test. My
personal best is 187ms. I'm convinced I can get under 150ms.

Sudoku — Easy, Medium,
Hard. Pencil notes mode, undo, hints, pauseable timer, 3-mistake
limit. The puzzle generator uses backtracking to build a valid
solved board then removes cells — every puzzle has exactly one
solution.

The technical bits I'm actually happy with

Dark mode that actually works. Every single component — tool
boxes, game boards, buttons, input fields, accordion FAQs — has
proper dark mode CSS. No more white-flashing tool boxes at 2am.

Schema.org on everything. Each tool has WebApplication,
HowTo (3 steps), FAQPage (7 questions), BreadcrumbList,
and Organization schemas. Probably overkill. Definitely fun to
implement.

Category hub pages. /tools/developer/, /tools/games/,
/tools/calculators/ etc. — each is a proper landing page for
the category, not just a filtered list. Good for SEO, good for
users landing from "free developer tools online" searches.

The Sudoku generator was genuinely tricky. Filling diagonal
3×3 boxes first, then backtracking to solve the rest, then
randomly removing cells. The shuffle inside the solver gives
you a different valid solution path each time.

What I'd do differently

Honestly? I'd start with three tools instead of trying to
build everything at once. The codebase is clean but maintaining
44 separate tool interfaces consistently (dark mode, responsive
layout, structured data, correct validation...) takes real effort.

Also: the Emoji Picker is 110KB of HTML because I embedded 3,000+
emoji directly in the page. I regret nothing. It's instant.

Try it

plix.tools

Everything is free, forever. No account needed. If you find a bug,
the contact page works — it goes straight to me.

If you're a developer and you bookmark one tool, I'd bet it's
either the Regex Tester
or the JSON Formatter.
The regex tester has live highlighting, capture group display, and
a replace mode with $1/$2 backreference support. The JSON
formatter has tree view.

Built with zero frameworks, zero dependencies, and a stubborn
refusal to upload anyone's files to a server.

— Saeid

DEV Community: Saeid