A free CV builder with no sign-up, watermark or upload

CV builds a CV in the browser tab. A form on the left takes who you are, a summary and as many sections as you want (entries with dates, labels with details, bulleted lines or a paragraph, in any order); the page on the right shows the CV as it will print, in one of five layouts, with a line where each sheet ends. A photo is optional and off unless you add one. Print / PDF gives the PDF. Save to computer writes a Word file that opens in Word, LibreOffice and Pages; saving it is part of OBSCURA Pro. There is no account, no watermark, no paid layout, and nothing is uploaded: the CV is kept in this browser and written to your disk when you ask.

What the paid ones are charging for

A CV builder has three parts: a form that asks the right questions, a layout that puts the answers on a page, and a file at the end. The first two are ordinary web pages. The third is where the money is: the form is free, the preview is free, and the PDF costs a subscription, or comes out with the site's name across the bottom, or arrives as a low-resolution picture. Meanwhile the CV, which is the most complete record of a person's working life that exists, is sitting in that company's database under whatever terms were in the box you ticked.

None of that is necessary. A browser can lay out a page and print it to PDF on its own, and a .docx is a zip of XML that a page can write. So this one does, and the PDF costs nothing. The Word file, the plain text and the CV's own file are saved through OBSCURA Pro, which runs in the tab like the rest.

What is there

• The form. Name, headline, email, phone, a town and a website; a summary; then sections. Experience, Education and Skills are there to start with, and Projects, Volunteering, Languages, Certifications, Publications, Awards, Interests and References are a click away, as is a custom section of any kind. Entries move up and down, and a removed one comes back with Undo.
• The page. Laid out at paper width and scaled to fit, so what is shown is what prints. Five layouts: Classic (centred name, serif headings, one column), Modern (a coloured band across the top and a side column for contact details, skills and languages), Compact (smaller type and tighter spacing, for one page), Sidebar (a column the full height of the page down the left, for the name, contact details, skills, languages and the bulleted sections) and Plain (one column with no colour and no rules, for the software that reads a CV before a person does). Seven accent colours. A4 or Letter. The line under the tool row says how many sheets it runs to.
• A photo, if you want one. Add a photo takes a PNG or a JPEG, squares it off and draws it down to 320 pixels, so it is kept in this browser with the rest; it prints 28 millimetres square at the top of the CV and goes at the top of the Word file. The form says where one is usual and where it is not: expected in much of Europe, left off in Britain, Ireland, the United States, Canada and Australia, where it invites the judgement a CV is not supposed to be about. The Plain layout leaves it off, on the page and in the Word file.
• The PDF. Print / PDF opens the browser's print dialogue with the site hidden and only the CV on the sheet; choose Save as PDF. The colours are kept.
• The Word file. Save to computer writes a .docx in one column: the name as a heading, the contact line, each section as a heading, entries with their dates, and lists as lists. It is editable anywhere. A recruiter's system that wants Word gets Word.
• Opening a Word CV. Open takes a .docx and reads its headings and bold paragraphs into sections and entries, so an old CV is a starting point rather than a retyping job. It is a reading of a document that was never a form, and the page says so; the dates and entries want checking against the original.
• Keeping it. The CV is saved in this browser as it is typed. Export gives the CV's own file (.cv.json), which opens here again exactly as it was, on any machine; and plain text, for the application forms that want it pasted.

What is not there

This is the part a comparison page usually leaves out.

• Fifty templates. Five layouts, chosen so a CV reads well in each. A CV is judged on what it says; the template that gets someone the interview has not been found.
• Writing it for you. No suggested phrases, no scoring, no "action verbs". The words are yours, and a hiring manager can tell.
• A cover letter. That is a document, and Docs writes one, in Word or PDF, with the same lack of an account.
• The two-column layouts in Word. The Word file is one column in every layout: Word gets the words in order and lays them out its own way, which is what makes the file editable. The Modern and Sidebar columns are for the PDF.

A CV is personal data

It has your name, how to reach you, where you have worked and studied and when, and, if you put it there, your address. Handing that to a site to lay out a page is a poor trade. Here the form, the page and the files are all made in the tab; the page works with the network switched off, and a test on every build checks that nothing is fetched from anywhere but this site. The form asks for a town rather than an address, because a CV does not need one and everyone it is forwarded to would have it.

For a CV that has to be judged without a name on it, BLIND takes the name and the identifying details out of a finished one. For a Word file that has been through a few hands, DOCSCRUB shows what it carries besides the words.

The short version