Free tool · PDF and Word · nothing uploaded
Free CV anonymiser
Remove the name, contact details, photo, date of birth and nationality from a PDF or Word CV.
- Your CV never leaves your computer
- No sign-up
- PDF or Word in, Blind CV out
1Choose your file
Your file never leaves your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
2Check the settings
3Get your file
About this tool
This free CV anonymiser removes a candidate's name, email address, phone number, home address, photo, LinkedIn and web links, date of birth and nationality from a PDF or Word CV, then gives you the anonymised file to download. It is free, there is no login, and your CV never leaves your browser: the file is read and rewritten by code running in this tab, and nothing is uploaded anywhere.
How it works
- 1
Drop the CV
PDF or Word (.docx). The tool reads it in your browser and fills in the candidate's name from the largest line at the top of the first page. Check it: that guess is the weakest part of the process.
- 2
Choose what goes
Name, email, phone, address, links, photo, date of birth and nationality are ticked by default. Add employer names, a school or anything else you want gone. Switch gendered pronouns to they/them if your client asks for it.
- 3
Read the preview, then download
The preview shows the CV's text with every removed item marked, and the first pages of a PDF as they will look. Read it before you send anything to a client, then download the anonymised file.
What it removes, and how
Detection is pattern matching plus the names you type: quick and predictable, not artificial intelligence. It looks for:
- The candidate's name: the full name you type and each part of it longer than two letters, wherever they appear, headers and footers included.
- Email addresses, and phone numbers with or without a country code, spaces, dashes or brackets.
- UK postcodes, street addresses that start with a house number, and US ZIP codes after a state.
- LinkedIn, GitHub and other profile links, web addresses, and bare LinkedIn handles such as in/jane-smith.
- Photos and other images: painted over in a PDF, deleted from a Word document.
- Dates of birth: a "Date of birth" or "DOB" line, and any full date such as 12/03/1985 or 12 March 1985.
- Nationality, gender and marital status written as a labelled line, such as "Nationality: British".
PDF and Word files are handled differently
A black box drawn over a PDF is not redaction: the words stay in the file and can be copied back out. So a PDF is rebuilt as a picture of each page with the removed items painted out. The new file contains no text and none of the original's metadata, but it can no longer be searched or parsed by an ATS. A Word document is edited properly instead: each removed item becomes a label such as [email], links are unwrapped so the address does not survive behind them, author and company are cleared from the file properties, and it stays an editable .docx.
What it cannot do
- Read a scanned CV. A scan has no text in it, so nothing is found or removed. The tool warns you when a page has no text. There is no OCR.
- Find a name it has not been told about: a nickname, an initial or a different spelling slips through unless you add it.
- Detect employer names, schools or places on its own. Type them in if they would identify the candidate.
- Catch unusual formats: a phone number in words, an age instead of a date of birth, a website without http or www.
- Open old .doc files. Save them as .docx first.
Questions recruiters ask
- Is this CV anonymiser really free?
- Yes. No account, no limit and no watermark. Your browser does the work, so there is no server cost to pass on.
- Is my candidate's CV uploaded anywhere?
- No. The file is opened by JavaScript in your browser tab and the anonymised copy is created there. Nothing is sent to Formatix or anyone else, and you can confirm that in your browser's network panel while it runs.
- Can the removed text be recovered from the anonymised PDF?
- No. The output PDF is built from images of the pages, so it contains no text objects and none of the original file's metadata, bookmarks or attachments. The removed words are not hidden under a box; they are not in the file.
- Does it work on scanned CVs?
- No. A scanned CV is a photograph with no text for the tool to read, so it cannot find the name or contact details. The tool tells you when a page has no text. Retype the CV, or ask the candidate for the original document.
- Is an anonymised CV enough for GDPR or blind recruitment?
- It removes the obvious identifiers, which is what blind shortlisting needs. It does not guarantee nobody could work out who the candidate is: a distinctive job title, employer or award can still identify someone. Read the preview and remove anything else that gives the person away.
Want a clean anonymised profile in your own template?
This tool blanks out what should not be seen. Formatix rebuilds the CV instead: it reads any CV, leaves out the identifying details, and produces a blind profile in your agency's own branded template, in Word or PDF, in about 30 seconds.
More free tools for recruiters
- Watermark a CVStamp "Confidential: submitted by your agency" across every page of a CV PDF.
- Add agency header to CVPut your agency name, contact line and logo in the header and footer of every page of a CV PDF.
- Submission cover pageAdd a branded front sheet with candidate, role, agency and date to a CV PDF.
- Merge CV PDFsBuild one candidate submission pack: cover note, CV, assessment and references in one PDF.
Open source: github.com/OpenRecruiterTools/recruiter-tools (MIT). Uses pdf.js, pdf-lib, JSZip and SheetJS, served from formatix.ai.