Free PGP encryption tool

Encrypt a message to someone's PGP public key, decrypt a message sent to you, or generate a PGP key pair. Everything runs on your device, so your private key and your passphrase never leave the browser tab. You never sign in, and closing the tab destroys the key.

Anyone can hold this key. It only lets people encrypt messages to the person who holds the matching private key.

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How the PGP encryption tool works

Runs entirely in your browser

1

Paste a key

Paste the recipient's public key to encrypt, or your own private key to decrypt. If you have neither, generate a key pair on the third tab.

2

Encrypt or decrypt

Your device does the work. The private key is unlocked in the browser tab, used, and thrown away, so it never crosses the network where it could be intercepted or logged.

3

Copy the result

Copy the ASCII-armored message and send it over any channel you like, including one you do not trust. Only the private key holder can read it.

Private by design: nothing leaves your browser

A PGP tool that decrypts on a server needs your private key and your passphrase, which is the entire secret. Handing those to a web service defeats the point of using PGP at all. This one never sends them anywhere:

01

100% client-side

Keys, messages, and passphrases stay in the browser tab. The page downloads the OpenPGP library once, and nothing you type is part of that request.

02

Nothing stored or logged

No account, no analytics on what you encrypt, no history. Reload the page and every key you pasted is gone from memory.

03

Open and verifiable

Cryptography comes from OpenPGP.js, the audited open-source implementation of the OpenPGP standard. No custom-rolled cryptography.

Public key versus private key

  1. Your public key is meant to be published. It only lets other people encrypt messages to you.
  2. Your private key decrypts those messages, and nobody else may ever hold it.
  3. Because the keys are separate, two strangers can exchange encrypted messages without first agreeing on a shared secret.
  4. Losing the private key or its passphrase makes every message encrypted to it permanently unreadable, so back both up before you publish the public key.

When to use a desktop client instead

This tool is right for a one-off message, for learning how PGP works, or for a key whose loss you could absorb. For a key that protects sources, funds, or a production system, use a desktop client such as GnuPG, where the code never arrives fresh over the network. That advice costs us a page view and is still the correct advice.

Built for developers and security-conscious teams

Journalists, maintainers, and anyone sending something private through a channel they do not control. BlockSurvey applies the same public-key thinking to research data with zero-knowledge surveys, where responses are encrypted on the respondent's device.

Developers

Encrypt a credential or a disclosure to a maintainer's published key before opening the issue.

Security & IT teams

Receive vulnerability reports encrypted to your team's public key, and decrypt them without pasting the key into a server.

Journalists & researchers

Read a message from a source who encrypted it to your published key, on a machine that is offline.

Building something that handles sensitive data?

BlockSurvey runs on zero-knowledge surveys, so the responses you collect are never sold or mined. The same public-key idea protects every response before it leaves the respondent's device.

Frequently asked questions

Is this PGP encryption tool free?

Yes. There is no sign-up, and nothing about the tool is held back behind a payment.

Does my message or private key get sent to a server?

No. Your message, your keys, and your passphrase stay in the browser tab and are never transmitted, logged, or stored. The page downloads the OpenPGP library once, which is the only network request it makes, and nothing you type is part of it. Open your browser's network tab and you can watch this yourself.

Should I paste my private key into a web page?

Only into a page that provably runs client-side, like this one, and ideally only with a key whose loss you could survive. A private key is the one secret you can never rotate away from cleanly, because every message ever encrypted to it stays readable. For a key that protects something serious, prefer a desktop client such as GnuPG, where nothing is loaded over the network at all.

What is PGP and how does it differ from a password-based tool?

PGP uses public-key cryptography: a public key that anyone can use to encrypt a message to you, and a private key that only you hold to decrypt it. Nobody has to share a secret in advance, which is what makes it work for correspondence between strangers. A password-based tool such as the AES encryption tool requires both sides to already know the same passphrase.

Which algorithm does the key generator use?

Keys are elliptic-curve keys on Curve25519, which is the modern default: small, fast, and considered secure at a strength comparable to a 3072-bit RSA key. Your private key is encrypted with the passphrase you choose before it is ever shown to you.

What happens if I lose my private key or its passphrase?

Every message encrypted to that key becomes unreadable, permanently. There is no reset and no recovery, because we never hold the key. Back up the private key somewhere safe and store the passphrase in a password manager before you publish the public key.

Can I use this offline?

Yes. Load the page once, disconnect from the internet, and encryption, decryption, and key generation keep working, because everything runs in your browser.

Is the encrypted output compatible with GnuPG and other PGP tools?

Yes. The output is a standard ASCII-armored OpenPGP message, and the keys are standard OpenPGP keys, so GnuPG, Thunderbird, and other implementations read them. Likewise, this tool decrypts messages produced by those clients.
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