Do I need Adobe Acrobat to combine PDFs, or is a browser tool enough?

What the browser merge does just as well

• Copies pages as they are, without recompressing images or changing fonts, so no quality is lost.
• Keeps every page's size, orientation and rotation, so A4 pages, labels and landscape tables mix without trouble.
• Carries over annotations and links placed on pages.
• Works on a computer or a phone, and never sends your files to a server.

What it does not do

• Does not carry bookmarks (the sidebar outline) into the merged file.
• Does not carry interactive form fields, so fill and flatten a form before merging.
• Does not carry document metadata such as title and author.
• Does not compress the file, edit text on the pages or run text recognition.

Every point in that second list is a real reason to use a full desktop editor. If your daily work is long handbooks with nested outlines, or interactive forms sent out for filling, the full program earns its price. If your work is invoices, quotations, shipping labels and catalogs, you are mostly paying for features you never use when merging.

Jobs next to merging, and where to find them

Merging in Merge PDFs is usually one step in a chain: merge, then move a page, delete a stray page or add numbers. Those jobs are separate tools on the site. For instance, after merging you can move a page into place in Reorder PDF pages, and each tool downloads a new file while leaving the original alone.

A quick way to decide

1. Ask: do my files have sidebar bookmarks, interactive forms or a digital signature that must survive?
2. If not, the browser merge does the whole job.
3. If so, use a full desktop editor for those particular files, or send them separately.