PDF2Go or PDFGym: are credits worth it for you?

Paying per action instead of per megabyte

The 10 September 2026 read of pdf2go.com found guest use summed up as a few free credits, a free account credited with thirty to start, each premium action priced at one credit, and monthly credits that reset per billing cycle without rollover. Checked 10 September 2026. No file size limit appeared anywhere on the site, so this page quotes no PDF2Go cap either. What you will actually run into is the credit balance, not the document size.

Hana, a volunteer coordinator, converts six sponsor logos from JPG to PDF for a gala brochure. Thirty welcome credits swallow that job without a dent, and she never thinks about file sizes. Had she run the same six conversions every week for a year, the monthly reset would have become a recurring errand, and an unmetered tab would have served her better by February.

PDF2Go and PDFGym compared

Who should pick which

One conversion this month, or the same conversion every month. Your answer picks the tool.

• A single conversion or recognition job: PDF2Go. Thirty credits cover it, the format range is wide, and the 24-hour deletion plus German jurisdiction is solid reassurance for routine files.
• The same job weekly: PDFGym. No balance to watch, no monthly reset to remember, no account to keep alive.
• Size targets, page work, passwords, stamps, metadata: PDFGym regardless of frequency. These jobs cost a credit per attempt elsewhere and nothing here.
• Slides or scans on sensitive files: neither online tool. Conversion you cannot do locally belongs in a desktop app, not in any upload form.

Where PDF2Go wins

Conversion range and legal footing. PDF2Go converts between PDF, Office formats and images in both directions, with recognition on top, which covers pairs PDFGym does not attempt, slides in either direction and anything scanned. For a one-off conversion of a routine document, thirty free credits are a generous allowance that costs nothing but an account.

The operator story deserves its own sentence. PDF2Go is run by QaamGo Web GmbH, a German company, and presents itself as operating under European data protection law, with files automatically deleted within 24 hours after processing. Checked 10 September 2026. A full day exceeds the single hour some rivals quote, and rules beat promises, but neither removes the upload itself.

Where PDFGym fits

PDFGym fits repetition and precision. No credits, no quota, no premium actions and no account: each tool acts identically on every run, since processing happens on your device at no per-file cost to the site. PDF to Word, Word to PDF, PDF to Excel and Excel to PDF cover the text-first office pairs locally, while images to PDF and PDF to images handle the picture pairs.

The ceilings here are physical rather than commercial: device memory, plus a 40 million pixel cap per page in page export, both stated on the tools. Where the two sides meet directly is compression, and the approaches differ: a typed kilobyte target with the winner read back, against a preset that spends one of your credits per attempt. For the free tool with a stated retention window, open the PDF Candy comparison; for the other credit-metered product, LightPDF.

How this comparison was checked

The credit figures, the missing size cap, the operator name, the jurisdiction and the 24-hour retention all quote PDF2Go's pages as read on 10 September 2026. PDF2Go may have changed any of them since. PDFGym's converters, caps and lack of metering quote the tool pages in this site's source. No accounts were created and no credits were spent for this page.