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You Need To Understand This
documents

CryptPad

Documents, spreadsheets and shared notes that are encrypted in your browser before they are stored.

Cost

Free to start, paid to go further

Free tier gives a limited amount of storage. Paid plans and self-hosting both exist.

Open source

Yes

The code is public. Anyone can inspect it, and it cannot be taken away from you.

Your data

Goes to their servers

Your files and text are sent to the company running the service.

Use it for this

Sharing a document with someone who has no account, when you would rather the hosting service could not read it. Good for anything mildly sensitive that still needs a link.

Do not use it for this

Heavy spreadsheet work, or teams already standardised on Google or Microsoft.

A moment where you would reach for it

Sending a draft with personal details to a colleague without putting it in a company Drive.

How hard is it to pick up?

Straightforward, but expect an hour of figuring it out.

Worth knowing before you use it

End-to-end encrypted: the encryption key lives in the link, not on the server, so the operator cannot read your document. That is a stronger guarantee than a deletion promise.

Other things that do this job

No tool is best at everything. These solve a similar problem, with different trade-offs.

About this entry

Checked on 1 Sept 2026. Prices and free limits change without warning, and often quietly. Treat everything above as a starting point and confirm on the official site before you rely on it.

Nothing here is sponsored. A tool appears because it solves a real problem, not because someone paid for it to be listed.