PDFsam Basic: Split, Merge and Rotate PDFs for Free

Splitting a 200-page scan into separate invoices, or merging five contracts into one file for a client: these are the jobs PDFsam Basic was built for. It works locally, so confidential documents never leave your computer.

Tools in PDFsam Basic

• Merge: Combine PDFs, choose page ranges from each file and add a table of contents.
• Split: Cut a PDF by page numbers, every n pages, bookmarks or file size.
• Rotate: Fix pages that were scanned sideways.
• Extract: Pull selected pages into a new PDF.
• Mix: Interleave pages from two files, handy for double-sided scans.

Which package to download

1. The Download button opens the official PDFsam Basic download page.
2. Windows 10 or later (64-bit): MSI installer or portable .zip. A legacy 32-bit build exists only for an old version.
3. macOS 11 Big Sur or later: A .dmg or .zip, each for Apple Silicon and Intel.
4. Linux (64-bit): A .deb package for Debian-based distributions or a portable .tar.gz archive.

The listed requirements are modest: about 256 MB of RAM and 70 MB of disk space.

Basic and the paid editions

PDFsam Basic is open source under the AGPL-3.0 and free. The same company sells separate commercial products for editing PDF content and converting files; you do not need them for splitting and merging, and Basic works fully on its own.

If you are on Windows and also want compression and OCR, PDF24 Creator is a free all-in-one alternative. To quickly look through the result, open it in Sumatra PDF.