A CloudConvert Alternative: What Matches and Where Your File Goes

Credits, or no account at all

CloudConvert is a file converter run by Lunaweb GmbH in Munich since 2012. On October 22, 2026, its home page said it handles “212 formats across 11 categories”. Its about page said 90 percent of files go through its API.

Its pricing works in conversion credits. The free plan gave “10 / day”, with files up to 1 GB and five minutes of processing time. The page said: “Start free with 10 conversions per day. No credit card required.”

Some jobs cost more. Their table sets a base of 1 credit for a general conversion, 2 for Office to PDF and 4 for PDF to Office. That day, 1,000 credits cost $17.00 as a one-time package, or $9.00 a month as a subscription. Their privacy policy says the service works “both without and with optional registration”.

PulsarKit is a website with more than 200 free tools for files. There is no sign-up, subscription or payment form, and browser tools have no cap on the number of jobs. The site is paid for by advertising.

190 of 2,091 conversions, checked on October 22, 2026

CloudConvert's catalog lists 212 formats in 11 groups, from 42 image and 39 archive formats to 3 for CAD. Each format links to a page that names the formats it turns into; eight of those pages were missing that day. Together the pages listed 2,091 conversions from one format to another.

For each conversion we looked for a PulsarKit tool that does it in one step. Options and limits may differ. Both sites change, so this is a count on one date. At that check, 190 of the 2,091 had a counterpart, starting from 76 of the 212 formats.

Images matched 82 of 551 conversions and video 53 of 432. Documents matched 21 of 243, audio 11 of 126 and spreadsheets 10 of 56. Slides and e-books matched 6 each, of 104 and 189, and vector files 1 of 109. Archives, CAD drawings and fonts had none.

The everyday conversions are among the matches: HEIC to JPG, WebP to PNG, MOV and MKV to MP4, and video to MP3 or GIF. So are Word, Excel and PowerPoint to PDF and PDF to Word. Camera RAW files such as CR2, NEF and ARW turn into JPG or PNG.

Our home page also has a Convert File button. Pick a MOV, for example, and it offers MP4, MP3 and GIF, then opens that tool with the file in place.

Where CloudConvert goes further

Most of the gap is in what a file can become. Here, video converts to MP4, GIF or animated WebP, or to MP3, AAC or WAV sound. CloudConvert also writes MOV, AVI, MKV, WebM, WMV and FLV. Files in WMV, FLV, MPEG, 3GP or TS give only sound here.

Audio ends in MP3 here, plus MP3 to WAV, while CloudConvert also writes AAC, AIFF, FLAC, M4A and WMA. Documents and slides go into PDF or come out of it. CloudConvert also converts between them, as in DOC to DOCX or PPT to PPTX.

RAW and PSD files become JPG or PNG here, and no tool here writes PSD or EPS. PulsarKit opens and makes ZIP archives only, so RAR, 7Z and TAR files have no tool. Nor do CAD drawings such as DWG, fonts such as TTF or vector files such as AI and CDR.

Big files favour CloudConvert. Its free plan takes files up to 1 GB. Our video tools stop at 200 or 300 MB, and browser image tools at 100 MB or less. Its home page also lists “Per-conversion controls for codec, bitrate, resolution and quality”.

CloudConvert has an API and connects to storage such as Amazon S3. Its Tools menu has Convert with AI, a beta that turns a request in your own words into conversion tasks. PulsarKit has no desktop program, no version for your own server and no API.

Their Tools menu, one by one

On October 22, 2026, CloudConvert's Tools menu had 13 entries. File Converter is the catalog counted above, and Convert with AI has no counterpart here. Each of the other 11 has one.

Save Website as PDF and the PNG and JPG website screenshots match our HTML to PDF and HTML to Image. Both take a web address. Convert to PDF/A matches PDF to PDF/A, with PDF/A-1b, 2b and 3b on both sites. PDF OCR matches our OCR PDF.

Compress PDF, Merge PDF, Create Archive, Extract Archive, Compress PNG and Compress JPG match tools that run in your browser. Some are narrower here. Their Merge PDF and PDF/A pages say they also take DOCX, JPG and other files, while ours take PDFs only. Their Create Archive lets you pick the archive format; ours makes ZIP.

The gap also runs the other way. JSON, XML and YAML are not in CloudConvert's catalog. PulsarKit converts JSON and XML to and from CSV, and YAML to and from JSON, as in CSV to JSON. Their PDF page listed no PDF to CSV or PDF to ODT. Their Tools menu had four PDF tools, and PulsarKit has more than 50, from Split PDF to Redact PDF.

Where your file goes

On CloudConvert, every job runs on its servers. Its privacy policy, updated October 19, 2026, says your files “are transferred to and temporarily stored on CloudConvert's servers”. They are deleted with the delete button or “automatically at the latest after 24 hours”. Its security page names AWS among its cloud providers and says each conversion runs in a separate, isolated container.

On PulsarKit, 125 of the 190 matching conversions ran in the browser that day, so the file stayed on your device. That covers all video and audio conversions, most image ones, PDF to images or text, and Excel to CSV.

The other 65 ran on our server. They take Office, Pages, HTML and EPUB files into PDF, and PDF into Word, RTF, Excel, PowerPoint or EPUB. EPUB and MOBI conversions and camera RAW, PSD and TIFF files are there too. Those tool pages say the file is deleted after processing and the result is wiped within about two hours. These tools take files of 50 to 300 MB, with up to 30 jobs an hour.

To continue in another tool, PulsarKit may store a local copy of your input or result in this browser. It can remain after you close the tab or restart the browser. Clear PulsarKit’s site data to delete it. To see whether any page sends your file away, ours included, use three checks in your browser.

Which one fits

For a common conversion, such as HEIC to JPG, MOV to MP4 or Excel to CSV, PulsarKit works in the browser. There is no account and no daily count. A list of next tools under the result passes the file on, so a converted photo can go straight into Compress Image.

For archives, CAD, fonts, rare e-book formats, video into MOV, AVI or WebM, files over 300 MB or an API, CloudConvert has what PulsarKit does not.