Question 1

Is Scalpel free?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Scalpel is completely free and open source under the GPLv3 license. There is no subscription, no account, no trial, and no watermark - the full app is the 6 MB download.

Question 2

Does Scalpel upload my PDFs to the cloud?

Accepted Answer

No. Scalpel is local-only: every operation, including OCR, runs on your own Windows PC. Nothing is uploaded, there are no servers, and the app has zero telemetry - no analytics, crash beacons or usage tracking.

Question 3

What can Scalpel do?

Accepted Answer

Scalpel can view, annotate, edit existing text, merge, split, reorder, rotate and transform pages (deskew, scale, flip), sign (drawn or with your own certificate), watermark and stamp, fill forms, OCR scans, redact, compress, password-protect, add page and Bates numbers, remove metadata, print and flatten PDFs - all in one window, with document tabs and recent files.

Question 4

Which operating systems does Scalpel support?

Accepted Answer

Scalpel runs on 64-bit Windows 10 and Windows 11. No runtime install is required - it is a single self-contained EXE.

Question 5

Is Scalpel portable?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The portable build is a single ~6 MB EXE you can run from a USB stick, desktop or network share. It leaves no trace on the host machine and can self-install later if you want a Start-menu shortcut.

Question 6

Does Scalpel do OCR offline?

Accepted Answer

Yes. OCR uses a bundled Tesseract engine that runs entirely offline on your CPU, so scanned documents become searchable without any upload.

Question 7

Is Scalpel a good free alternative to Adobe Acrobat?

Accepted Answer

For local PDF editing it is a strong free alternative: Scalpel edits text, annotates, signs (drawn or with a real certificate), watermarks, transforms, fills forms, OCRs, redacts, merges and protects PDFs with no subscription and no account. Unlike cloud editors, your documents never leave your machine.

Question 8

How do I install Scalpel?

Accepted Answer

Three ways, all the same signed build: download the portable EXE and run it, use the one-click installer (adds a Start-menu shortcut and optional .pdf default), or get it from the Microsoft Store for sandboxed automatic updates.

Precise PDF editing. Nothing leaves your machine.

A full surgical kit, in one window.

Read & navigate

Mark it up

Change the text

Reorganize

Sign & fill

Print & flatten

Document operations, run locally.

Page & Bates numbering

Compression

OCR

Redaction

Password protection

Metadata removal

Digital signature

Watermark & stamp

Transform pages

Your documents never leave your machine.

100% on-device

Zero telemetry

No account

Open source

Questions, answered.

Three ways to install. Same 6 MB app.

Portable

Installer

Microsoft Store

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