About Makecade
Built for Privacy, Performance, and Civic Transparency.
Learn about our founding ethos, our commitment to zero-knowledge computing, and how we build open web software.
Our Founding Story
Makecade was established by a team of independent software engineers and open data enthusiasts who grew frustrated with the degraded state of web utilities. In recent years, virtually every single-purpose online tool—whether an image compressor, a PDF splitter, or an income tax estimator—has evolved into a lead-capture funnel designed to extract personal identifiers, install tracking scripts, and sell user behavioral data to advertising exchanges.
We asked a simple engineering question: What if web tools were built to run entirely inside the client’s browser, without ever transmitting user documents to an external server?
Advances in browser runtime performance, WebAssembly compilation, Web Workers, and the HTML5 Canvas API make it completely feasible to process multi-megabyte files, perform mathematical amortizations, render high-density geospatial choropleths, and run frame-accurate action games locally. Makecade was built to prove this model at scale.
Our Core Commitments
Zero Data Collection
We do not ask for your name, email address, phone number, or company. We do not maintain user databases, and our tools contain zero server-side upload handlers.
Complete Transparency
Our open data sources are attributed with full statutory provenance. Our code runs in plain view within your browser dev tools. Anyone can audit our network activity to verify no files leave their computer.
Fair & Non-Intrusive Monetization
Rather than paywalls or data brokerage, Makecade covers infrastructure costs through standard, privacy-compliant Google AdSense advertising. Content is never gated behind ads.
Technology Stack & Infrastructure
Makecade is built with an obsession for speed and minimalism. We eschew heavy backend web frameworks in favor of static HTML multi-page architecture, React for componentized interfaces, TypeScript for strict type verification, and Cloudflare Pages and Edge Workers for sub-20ms global content delivery.
Our mapping infrastructure employs MapLibre GL JS paired with PMTiles, a format developed by Protomaps that enables serverless vector tile streaming via standard HTTP byte-range requests. This eliminates costly tile servers while delivering instantaneous 60 FPS panning across tens of thousands of administrative boundaries.
Contact & Editorial Standards
We welcome corrections, dataset updates, feature requests, and security disclosures from the community. If you identify an error in our statutory calculations or have suggestions for new tools, reach out directly at hello@makecade.com or visit our Contact & Support page.