About PaperCV

Why it works the way it does

The resume builder business model is usually the same: the builder is free, and the download is not. You spend forty minutes typing in your employment history, click the button, and meet a paywall — often a subscription that is easier to start than to stop. Some will give you the PDF with a watermark across it instead, which amounts to the same thing.

PaperCV has no paid tier at all, so there is nothing to meet at the download button. Every template, the PDF, and the JSON export are free, and they will stay free because there is no other version to upsell you to.

The second reason matters more. A resume holds your full name, phone number, where you live, where you have worked, and usually enough to infer your age and your salary band. That is among the most sensitive data a web tool can handle, and most builders handle it by storing it on a server tied to an account. PaperCV does not have a server to store it on: your draft lives in your own browser’s local storage, and the PDF is rendered on your device. Nothing is uploaded, which is also why no one here can read your resume, lose it in a breach, or sell it to a recruiter.

The honest consequence: with no account, there is nothing to sync and nothing to recover. Your resume stays in the browser profile you typed it into — it will not appear on your phone, and clearing your site data erases it. That is what the one-click JSON export is for: it is a real file you keep, and it is the backup. Export it before you clear anything.

Why there is no photo

None of the templates support a photo, and that is a decision rather than an omission. In the US and the UK, a photo on a resume is a liability: many employers discard or redact them to limit discrimination claims, and some applicant tracking systems mangle the layout around them. Leaving it out is the safer default.

It is also the wrong default for a lot of the world. In Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and much of continental Europe a photo is still expected, and if you are applying there PaperCV is not the right tool for your CV. Saying so plainly is more useful than letting you find out after you have typed everything in.

What it deliberately does not do

Being clear about the edges is more useful than pretending there are none. PaperCV does not write or rewrite your content with AI, does not build cover letters, and does not import an existing resume from PDF, DOCX or LinkedIn — the only import is PaperCV’s own JSON export. It holds one resume per browser profile rather than a library of tailored variants, it does not sync between devices, and it outputs PDF only, never .docx.

If you need an editable Word file because a recruiter insists on one, or an academic CV running to twelve pages of publications, or a region-specific format like Europass, a word processor will serve you better and you should use one.

What “ATS-friendly” means here

The phrase gets used loosely, so here is what it means in practice for these templates: every line is real selectable text in the PDF — including your name and contact details, none of which is an image — section headings are plain words like “Experience” and “Education” that keyword matchers look for, the reading order is linear so a parser cannot get the columns wrong, and the fonts are embedded so the file renders the same everywhere.

What it does not mean is a guaranteed score from any particular system. Nobody outside those vendors can promise that, and anyone who does is guessing. The ATS checklist is written as a checklist for that reason: it tells you what a parser actually receives, and leaves the claims there.

Contact

Corrections, bug reports and feature requests are all welcome, and a bug report that names your browser and OS is worth ten that don’t. Write to damienyvert.dev@gmail.com. Security reports go to the same address, and it is also published in /.well-known/security.txt.

For exactly what data exists and where, see the privacy policy. The short version is that your resume is never part of it.