every tool in foliu is free. merge, split, compress, convert, rotate, reorder, watermark, sign, extract images. all of them. no premium tier. no “upgrade to unlock.” no subscriptions. no trial periods.
the entire business model is a tip jar in settings.
this is either principled or stupid and honestly we’re not totally sure which yet (´-ω-`)
the tip jar
if you go to settings, there’s a small section called “Support Foliu.” three tiers:
- a coffee - the smallest tip
- a notebook - a bit more
- a library - the generous one
themed. warm. no guilt trips. no popup ever asks you to donate. no banner counts the days since you started using the app. no “you’ve performed 50 operations, maybe consider…” nag. nothing.
you have to go find it yourself. and if you never do, the app works exactly the same forever. there’s no behavioral difference between a paying user and a non-paying user because there is no paying user. there are users, and some of them voluntarily left a tip.
RevenueCat handles the payments. which is kind of funny because RevenueCat is built for paywalls and subscription management and we’re using it for… a tip jar. like buying a ferrari to drive to the corner shop.
why though
Furkan’s reasoning was pretty direct and i think he’s right.
the PDF tool market is broken because of how it’s monetized. when your revenue comes from converting free users to paid users, every UX decision serves the conversion funnel. that’s not a conspiracy, it’s just how incentives work.
“hmm should we let users merge 3 files for free or limit it to 2?” “well, the data shows that limiting to 2 drives 14% more conversions…” “2 it is.”
and now your product is worse because of a business decision. and it keeps getting worse. every quarter, someone in a meeting asks “how do we increase conversion?” and the answer is always “add friction to free” or “move features to premium.” never “make the product so good people can’t help but tell others about it.”
foliu can’t do that. there’s nothing to convert TO. the free tier IS the product. the only way to succeed is to make something genuinely good enough that people feel like it deserves support.
is that naive? maybe! but the alternative is becoming the thing we complained about ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
the trust play
here’s the thing Furkan keeps saying: in the PDF tool market, trust is a competitive advantage.
think about it. every other PDF app is trying to extract value from you. subscriptions, ads, data collection, upsells. from the moment you open the app, there’s a negotiation happening. “i’ll give you this feature if you give me money/attention/data.”
foliu doesn’t negotiate. you open it, everything works, bye. your documents stay on your device. there’s no account. there’s no cloud. there’s no analytics you can’t opt out of.
and that changes how the app feels to use. you’re not looking for the catch. you’re not waiting for the nag screen. you’re just… using a tool. the way tools should work.
there’s a handful of companies that operate like this and they tend to build insanely loyal communities:
Mullvad VPN charges 5 euros/month. no accounts, no email, you get a random number as your ID. they can’t even identify their own customers. people love them for it.
Porkbun is a domain registrar that’s just… nice? cheap domains, clear pricing, no upsells, a playful brand. people recommend them unprompted.
Wikipedia runs on donations. no ads, no paywalls, no data harvesting. and somehow it’s one of the most visited sites on the internet.
these aren’t charities. they’re businesses that figured out that radical honesty creates a different kind of loyalty. the kind where people actively tell their friends about you because recommending you feels good, not transactional.
that’s the bet foliu is making.
what’s local processing actually mean
this comes up a lot so let me be specific. when we say “your documents never leave your device” that’s not marketing copy. it’s architecture.
every PDF operation in foliu is performed using Apple’s built-in frameworks. PDFKit and Core Graphics. these run on your phone’s processor. there is no server component. there is no API call. there is no “uploading for processing.”
merge? it opens both PDFs locally, copies pages from one to the other, writes a new file to your local storage.
compress? it renders each page as a JPEG at reduced quality and resolution, then assembles a new PDF from those images. all on-device.
extract images? it walks the PDF’s internal resource dictionary (a nested structure of content streams and XObject references), finds embedded images, decodes them, and presents them to you. your phone does all of this.
there is literally no mechanism for your documents to leave your device. the app doesn’t have networking code for document transfer. it’s not that we promise not to upload your files. it’s that we can’t.
the only network calls foliu makes are:
- PostHog (anonymous analytics, opt-out in settings)
- Sentry (crash reports, opt-out in settings)
- RevenueCat (tip jar transactions)
none of these ever see your documents. and all of them except RevenueCat can be turned off with a toggle.
does it actually work as a business
honestly? ask us in a year (⊙_⊙;)
foliu has been on the App Store since early March 2026. it’s too early to say whether the tip jar generates meaningful revenue. the honest answer is that right now it doesn’t matter because this is a passion project, not a startup. Furkan has a day job. the app costs basically nothing to run because there’s no server infrastructure.
the math is simple:
- hosting: $0 (no servers)
- Apple developer account: $99/year
- domain: like $10/year
- PostHog: free tier
- Sentry: free tier
- RevenueCat: free until meaningful revenue
total operating cost: ~$110/year. that’s… not a lot of tips needed to break even.
the dream scenario is that the tip jar covers the operating costs and maybe pays for Furkan’s coffee habit. the realistic scenario is that it might not even do that. and that’s… fine? because the app exists because it should exist. the market needed a PDF tool that wasn’t trying to extract value from its users, and now there is one.
if it takes off and the tips flow, great. if it stays small and a few hundred people get a free, honest PDF tool on their phones, also great. the app works either way.
what comes next
foliu is currently at v0.2.0. all 9 tools are live and working. the next version (v0.3.0, codename “warm desk”) is about making the home screen smarter. stacks for organizing documents, search, multi-select, batch operations. the shelf evolves from a flat list into something that feels like a real desk where you keep your papers.
still free. still local. still calm. still paper that learned to think.
the bet continues (◕ᴗ◕)