Trust

Browser first. Privacy first. If useful work can happen on your device, that is where it should happen.

Local is the default

For most tools, what you paste, open or calculate stays entirely on your device. JavaScript and WebAssembly in your browser do the work. GratisTools never receives the file or text in those local tools.

That is an architecture choice. No upload first. No account first. No server round-trip simply because it would be easier for us to build that way.

When live data is actually needed

Some answers do not exist locally. Checking a VAT number today, looking up a Peppol participant or validating an official address needs a current source. In those cases the specific tool makes only the connection needed for that lookup. Unrelated files and input are not sent along with it.

Examples of sources used today:

• European Commission / VIES for VAT checks.
• Peppol infrastructure and the Peppol Directory for participant checks.
• DNS Belgium for current .be domain information.
• Digitaal Vlaanderen for official Flemish address data.
• For technical domain checks, a tool may also query DNS infrastructure or fetch the website you explicitly ask it to test.

That list can grow as new tools are added. A tool that needs the network says so on its page. The rule stays the same: local when it can be local; connect only when the answer genuinely lives elsewhere.

Why there is no cookie banner

During normal use we do not set analytics, advertising or profiling cookies. Our own usage statistics are cookie-free and have no visitor ID: we can count that a tool was used without knowing who used it or what content they processed.

For pins, preferences, flows and things you deliberately save on this device, your browser can use local storage. That is your browser keeping data for you; it is not automatically sent to GratisTools.

If you choose to sign in, strictly necessary session cookies keep you signed in. They are not advertising or tracking cookies. So for ordinary tool use there is nothing to accept or reject before you start. If we ever add non-essential cookies or tracking that requires consent, we will ask before enabling it.

We do not want to collect your files

A PDF merger needs your PDFs to merge them. We do not need a copy. A JSON formatter needs your JSON to format it, not a database record. Many checks need little more than your browser and a few lines of code.

GratisTools is not built around "upload your document and we will keep it". Where possible, we simply turn your browser into the piece of software you need at that moment.

Accounts are optional

The core of GratisTools works without an account. Pinned tools, recent activity, flows and many preferences can stay locally in the browser. Sign-in is there only for features where saving or syncing across devices genuinely adds something.

Open source

A growing part of the Belgian utilities is open source on GitHub. That makes reuse possible, but just as importantly it makes the logic inspectable: a calculation or validator does not have to be a closed black box.

Limits

Running locally does not automatically make a result official. A validator can confirm that a value follows a format without proving that the underlying information is correct. External registers can also be unavailable, delayed or changed by their operator.

For consequential legal, tax, payroll or administrative decisions, the relevant official source remains the final reference.

GratisTools.be has been reviewed and approved for listing on SaaSHub. That is an independent software-directory listing, not a security audit or technical certification.

Something looks wrong?

Tell us at hello@gratistools.be. If possible, send an example that contains no personal or confidential data.