Is CloudConvert Safe? Where Your Files Go

Yes, CloudConvert is safe for ordinary files such as photos, slides, public documents and media you would be fine emailing. It is a real company (Lunaweb GmbH) that publishes a privacy policy and a security page, and both describe sensible handling. The catch is the same for every online converter: your file is uploaded to a server, so the real question is not whether the site is a scam but whether you are comfortable with that upload. Everything below comes from CloudConvert's own privacy policy, security page and API documentation, read on 2026-11-03, and we flag where those pages say nothing.

At most 24 hours, according to its privacy policy, and often much less. The policy says files you remove with the delete button are deleted immediately and irreversibly, and that otherwise deletion happens automatically "at the latest after 24 hours." The security page is stricter in tone: files are kept only for processing and deleted immediately afterwards. Those two statements are compatible, but they are not the same promise, so treat 24 hours as the ceiling you can plan around. If you convert something you would rather not leave on a server for a day, click delete yourself as soon as you have downloaded the result.

Files are processed by machines in a server region chosen by your location, and CloudConvert says no human looks at them. The privacy policy says hosting is in Germany for most users and in the US for US users, picked by the geographically nearest server to your IP address. It names Amazon Web Services, OVH and Hetzner among its providers. It also states that all file processing is done by machine with no human interaction, and the security page adds that each conversion runs in its own isolated container and that staff cannot technically access your files. For US readers, that means your uploads are normally handled on US infrastructure, not shipped to Europe.

The pages we read do not say whether stored files are encrypted at rest. They state that transfers are SSL encrypted, nothing more, and the security page does not address encryption at rest at all. Other gaps and details worth knowing: the ISO 27001 certification from TÜV Süd covers the information security management system of Lunaweb GmbH, and the page says a data processing agreement is available on request. Account and log data outlive your files: IP address, user agent and referrer logs are deleted after 180 days, and payment records can be kept up to 10 years. On the API side, the docs say export tasks can produce public URLs, so anyone building on it should check how those links are handled.

It is fine whenever a leaked copy would cost you nothing. Think of a holiday photo, a public brochure PDF, a screen recording for a tutorial, or a format your own software cannot open. For those jobs CloudConvert's breadth and reliability are real advantages, and the 24-hour ceiling plus machine-only processing is a reasonable trade. It is also the right call for unusual formats or bulk and API work, where nothing in-browser competes. Be more careful with contracts, ID scans, tax or medical records, anything under an NDA, and any file containing credentials. For those, the safest upload is the one that never happens, whichever vendor's policy looks good.

For the tools below, the source shows the work happens in your browser. MP4 to MP3 runs ffmpeg.wasm through a shared loader (src/lib/ffmpeg-runtime.ts) that serves the core from our own /ffmpeg folder instead of a CDN, and the video engines we searched contain no network upload calls. Merge PDF and Compress PDF use pdf-lib in the page, and their stores make no fetch calls. The one thing that does leave your device is analytics: Merge PDF reports a tool_start event carrying only the tool name. We verified those tools specifically, not every tool on the site. The tradeoff is scope: far fewer formats than CloudConvert, and a roughly 30 MB engine download the first time you use a video tool.