Free print PDF check — preflight for PDFs, privacy by design
BANCO is an independent, standalone web app — not a plug-in for Acrobat, PitStop or any other PDF software. Drop a file here and a full preflight inspection — bleed, image resolution, color spaces, fonts and overprint — runs in Web Workers on your machine, so there is nothing to upload and no copy of your artwork on any server.
- free tier
- no account required
- works offline
Drop. Analyze. Ship.
Drag a PDF onto the page. BANCO parses it with a WebAssembly pipeline, walks every page, and returns a structured report in seconds — verdict, per-issue fixes, and a font license audit.
- Deterministic checks — no AI, no guessing. The same file always yields the same report.
- Workers, not the main thread — the UI stays responsive even on 200-page files.
- Offline after first load — a service worker caches everything. Disconnect and keep working.
Structured findings with the fix, not just the flag.
Start your preflight here
Pick a check, drop your file, get the answer
Six focused scanners — one per problem: bleed, resolution, color, fonts, licenses, overprint. Choose the check you need below, drop the PDF, and the verdict appears on the spot; or run every check at once in the workspace.
PDF Preflight Checker
All five checks in one drop — bleed, resolution, fonts, color and overprint.
Bleed Checker
Verify the required 3 mm bleed against the TrimBox, per side, per page.
DPI Checker
Find every image under 300 DPI at placed size, with page and coordinates.
Embedded Fonts Checker
Confirm every font in the PDF is embedded before the RIP substitutes it.
Color Space Checker
Detect RGB, CMYK and Device color without an embedded ICC profile.
Font License Checker
Read the fsType embedding permission straight from the font binary.
Private by design, not by promise
Client-side PDFs and NDAs shouldn't ride through someone else's server. BANCO has no backend, no uploads, and no analytics. Open the Network tab, drop a file, and watch nothing happen.
The preflight checklist
A print-ready PDF, in nine steps
The complete guide to a PDF that survives the press: bleed and safe zone, effective resolution, RGB to CMYK conversion, black values and spot inks, embedded fonts, overprint flags, file delivery and proofing. Every step tells you what to check, why the press cares, and the fix.
Add 3 mm of bleed — and keep a safe zone inside the trim
Bleed is the extra artwork that extends beyond the final trim size, so paper movement during cutting never shows as a white sliver.
Read the stepKeep photos at 300 DPI, line art at 1200 DPI
Screens display images at 72 DPI; print needs a real minimum of 300.
Read the stepConvert RGB to CMYK — an embedded profile alone isn't enough
Monitors emit light (RGB); ink reflects it (CMYK), and the CMYK gamut is smaller — so unmanaged RGB gets converted unpredictably and bright neons and deep blues shift.
Read the stepSet black values — and reserve spot inks — on purpose
Not all blacks are created equal.
Read the stepEmbed every font — or outline the text
Unembedded fonts are substituted at the RIP — often with Arial or Courier — and the layout silently reflows: hyphenation moves, text re-wraps, widths change.
Read the stepReview overprint flags before the RIP decides
Overprint (the OP/op keys in an ExtGState) makes an object print on top of the inks below instead of knocking them out.
Read the stepDeliver a press-quality PDF, not a source file
Native source files — InDesign, Illustrator — reopen differently on every machine and can shift or substitute along the way; they are for editing, not submission.
Read the stepProofread on paper, then approve a proof
Spellcheck does not catch every error; a human eye must review headers, phone numbers, addresses, captions and contact details.
Read the stepRun the preflight and archive the report
A structured preflight report turns 'the printer rejected my file' into a five-minute fix list.
Read the stepQuestions, answered
The things people ask before trusting a tool with their print-ready files.
Are my files uploaded to a server?
No. BANCO parses PDFs and font files inside your browser using WebAssembly and Web Workers. There is no backend that receives your files — you can open the browser's Network tab…
What does BANCO check in a PDF?
BANCO measures bleed (MediaBox versus TrimBox against the 3 mm rule, per side), computes the effective DPI of every placed image (300 for photos, 1200 for line art), flags Devic…
Which file types can I analyze?
BANCO accepts PDF documents for the full preflight (bleed, resolution, color, fonts, overprint) and font files — .ttf, .otf, .woff and .woff2 — for a dedicated license audit bas…
Does BANCO work offline?
Yes. After your first visit, a service worker caches the app so it keeps working without a connection — preflight included. The current online/offline status is shown in the wor…
Is BANCO really free?
Yes. The analysis runs on your machine, so there is no server cost to meter — every preflight check is free and unlimited. Paid tiers only add convenience features; the checks t…
What do I get with a free account?
A free account — just a verified email, no credit card — keeps 30 reports in your history instead of 5 and exports PDF reports without the guest watermark. Privacy is identical:…
Free where it matters
The analysis itself is always free — it runs on your machine, so there is nothing to meter. Paid tiers only add convenience.
Guest
€0 — no account
- ✓ Every preflight check, unlimited
- ✓ Works fully offline
- ✓ Latest 5 reports in history
- — PDF export with guest watermark
Free account
€0 — just an email
- ✓ Everything in Guest
- ✓ 30 reports kept in history
- ✓ Clean, watermarked-free PDF export
- ✓ Same privacy: files stay local
BANCO today = the two free tiers above. Pro is announced, not shipping — see the Pro section below — and when it launches, its pricing will stay anchored to the professional desktop suites it complements: Enfocus PitStop Pro (a paid Acrobat plug-in, about $40/month) and callas pdfToolbox, at a small fraction of their cost, for analysis-first workflows.
BANCO ProPlanned — not yet available
Free analysis stays free. Pro is for the workflow around it.
Every check keeps running on your machine for nothing — there is no server to pay for and no reason to meter it. What a paid plan can add is the part a browser tab cannot do on its own: a history that follows you across devices, comparisons between revisions, and the print presets of the presses you actually use.
- Encrypted sync across devices — reports follow you to another machine as ciphertext: findings and file names are encrypted on your device with a key only you hold, so the PDF never leaves it and the server never sees a readable report.
- A history that scales: 500 reports — the free cap is 30, so a long job keeps its paper trail without you pruning it.
- Revision comparison — diff two versions of the same artwork and see exactly which findings were fixed and which crept back in. Runs in your browser on decrypted reports; nothing is compared on a server.
- Print presets — save each press's rules once (bleed, DPI targets, ink limit) and have the checks measure against them instead of today's fixed 3 mm / 300–1200 DPI defaults.
Pro is in development, not on sale: joining the waitlist costs nothing and the first cohort gets a founding-member price (planned around €7/month).
What you get
Free today| Feature | Free account | Pro (planned, not available) |
|---|---|---|
| All six checks | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Files stay on device | Yes | Yes |
| Report history | 30 entries | 500 entries |
| PDF export | Clean, one report | Clean + batch export |
| Cross-device sync | — | Encrypted blobs |
| Files on a server | None | None |
| Revision comparison | — | Included |
| Print presets | — | Included |
| Price | €0 | ~€7/mo |
No paid tier exists yet — nothing on this page is behind a paywall, and the analysis will never be. Two pieces are still missing before Pro can ship: a payment provider (a merchant of record, so EU VAT is handled) and the encrypted blob store with its per-account quota. Neither changes the core promise: the PDF itself is never uploaded.