Rat PDF

You already lead with the enemy, which most founders never manage, so the positioning instinct is right: paywalls on basic features, forced signups, watermarks, bad output. "Every other PDF tool wants your email, your money, or your watermark, this one just does the thing" is a stronger hero than "all-in-one toolkit." The anti-wall stance is also your moat, because iLovePDF and Smallpdf make their money from the exact walls you removed, so they cannot follow you without hurting their own funnel.

Here is the thing to decide before you scale, because "no accounts, no walls" is a beautiful way in and a brutal business model: you have deliberately removed every retention and monetization lever you have, no email, no login, no upsell, every visit anonymous and one-off. So one question decides whether this survives: is RatPDF processing files in the browser, or on your server? Because if it is client-side, that is your whole answer, free stays sustainable because the user's own machine does the work, and you get a real privacy line for free: your file never leaves your device. Lean into that hard.

And if it is server-side, then free-forever plus no account is a hosting bill with no way to pay it, and you will eventually be forced to add the wall you built this to avoid. So name the business now, an optional pro-speed tier that never gates the core, an API other sites embed, something, and choose the one that does not betray the single line that won people over.

The part that caught my attention is that almost everyone complains about PDF tools.

Far fewer people actually switch.

I'd be curious what you discover about the difference between those two groups.