Why there are ads on a free tool
Short answer: a domain, a build pipeline, and two animals who eat twice a day regardless of traffic. Long answer below.
The costs are real, just small
Because every conversion runs in your browser, there is no per-file server cost here — no compute to rent, no storage to pay for, no bandwidth spent moving your data around. That is the whole reason this can be free without a usage cap or an account wall.
What is left is a domain, a static host, and the ongoing work of keeping six file formats parsing correctly across browsers. Parquet in particular does not maintain itself. The ads cover that, and they are the reason there is no "upgrade to convert files over 10 MB" button anywhere on this site.
What the ads do not do
- They never see your data. Your file is read into a Web Worker on your machine and converted there. No ad script has access to it, because it never exists anywhere an ad script could reach.
- They never block a conversion. No ad gates the convert button, and the post-conversion ad only appears once your download has already started.
- They are the only third party here. This site runs no analytics at all — no counter, no pixel, nothing measuring what you convert. The ad network is the single outside script on the page, and blocking it leaves the converter fully working.
Meet the beneficiaries
Coconut is a cat. He supervises, which mostly means sitting on things and looking unimpressed by test coverage. Whisky is a dog. He approves of everything immediately and enthusiastically, which makes him a poor code reviewer and excellent company.
Neither of them contributes to hosting costs. Both of them are extremely confident about dinner time. The ad you scrolled past is the arrangement that keeps everyone fed and this converter free.
A sample of what they have to say
- Coconut expects premium service. Whisky expects snacks.
- Built with code, coffee, and supervision from Coconut and Whisky.
- Coconut thinks this website belongs to him. Whisky agrees with everyone.
- Free converter. Very non-free pets.
If you would rather not see them
Use an ad blocker. Genuinely — the converter works identically with one running, nothing is detected or nagged about, and no feature is withheld. If the tool saved you time, telling one other person about it helps more than an impression would.
