Establish provenance for a single file in under two minutes, from $1.99. An independent, dated certificate that anyone can verify. No subscription and no account.
Warning
Important — read this before you continue
Your file never leaves your device. Provlyn stores only the proof, never the file, so unpublished work stays unpublished.
You must keep the exact, unaltered file yourself. The certificate is bound to the file as it is at this moment. Re-saving, re-exporting or editing it changes the fingerprint, and the proof can no longer be verified against it. We strongly recommend keeping an unaltered copy alongside any version you go on to work with, ideally in a specific folder for original files and their certificates.
Your file stays on your device. Only its fingerprint is sent.
One-off payment, no subscription. Tax added at checkout.
Your file never leaves your control — only its cryptographic fingerprint is recorded.
The Standard proof at $1.99 gives you an independent RFC 3161 timestamp and a permanent Bitcoin anchor. It is real, independent evidence that your file existed on a given date, and anyone can check it without going through Provlyn. The Qualified proof at $2.99 adds a qualified electronic timestamp issued by a qualified trust service provider on the EU Trusted List. That is what brings the eIDAS Article 41 presumption with it. If your work is likely to end up in a dispute in Europe, the qualified version is the one that shifts the burden of proof.
You need an independent, dated record made at the time, held somewhere you do not control. A record you maintain yourself can always be questioned; an independent one has to be disproved by whoever challenges it. A cryptographic timestamp binds the exact content of your file to an exact moment, recorded by a third party.
Copyright itself costs nothing. Across the Berne Convention countries — including the UK — it arises automatically the moment you create the work, with no registration and no fee. What you do not get automatically is proof of when you created it, and that is what a dispute turns on. A Provlyn cryptographic proof costs $1.99, or $2.99 for an eIDAS backed legally qualified version.
All three depend on records you or a single platform control. File dates move with system settings and re-saves. Email headers can be altered by anyone with server access. The so-called poor man’s copyright, posting work to yourself, has no special standing in law and an envelope can be opened and resealed. The weakness is the same in each case: the record is not independent.
A qualified electronic timestamp is issued by a qualified trust service provider on the EU Trusted List. Under eIDAS Article 41 it carries a presumption of the accuracy of the date and time it indicates and the integrity of the data bound to it. In plain terms, the law starts from the position that your date is correct, and the burden of proof shifts to whoever disputes it. That presumption applies across all EU member states, and the EEA states.
A Provlyn certificate proves that a specific file existed in a specific form on a specific date, and that it has not been altered since. It does not by itself prove who the author is, and it does not prove the work is original. Those remain separate questions. What the certificate does is take the argument about dates off the table.
Before you share, submit, pitch or publish. The record has to exist before the moment it is needed, and it cannot be created retrospectively. A pitch should carry a record from before the meeting, a manuscript from before the first submission, a design from before it goes to the factory.
No. This is a guest purchase — choose a file, pay, and receive your certificate by email. No login, no password.
A PDF certificate with your file’s SHA-256 hash, the timestamp, and, for the qualified tier, the eIDAS provider’s name — plus the timestamp tokens themselves, attached to the PDF, so anyone can verify them independently without going through Provlyn.
No limit is enforced. Your file is hashed entirely in your browser, so the practical limit is what your device can handle, not anything Provlyn imposes.
You are refunded automatically and in full. No manual request is needed.
No. The link is also emailed to you, and it never expires — return to it any time.
Each purchase covers one file. For several files, either buy separately for each, or open a Provlyn account, which covers many deposits per month for a flat rate rather than paying per file each time.
If you are regularly protecting more than 4 files a month, it is more cost effective to take a Provlyn subscription. Protecting around 10 files a month saves you over 50% compared with paying per file, and adds a permanent vault, sharing with access logs, and watermarking. At higher volumes the saving grows further: protecting 30 files a month, including 10 with qualified eIDAS protection, saves over 80%.
No. It is independent evidence that a specific file existed, unaltered, at a specific time — the kind of evidence a dispute would be tested against. It does not decide a dispute itself; a judge, arbitrator, or the parties do that, using it as evidence.
No. The tier is fixed at purchase, since a qualified timestamp has to be requested before your file’s state is stamped. Choose Qualified at checkout if you want eIDAS coverage.
Nothing happens to your existing certificate — it remains exactly as valid as the day it was issued, since it is bound to the file’s fingerprint at that specific moment. But it can no longer verify a changed file: an edited file produces a different fingerprint, which will not match the one recorded. Before you protect a file, we recommend renaming it clearly — for example, adding "PROOF OF PROVENANCE — DO NOT ALTER" to the file name — so it is never mistaken for a working copy afterwards.
No — only its SHA-256 fingerprint. Your file never leaves your device or reaches Provlyn’s servers. Storing the file itself, in a permanent encrypted vault, is what a Provlyn subscription adds — not part of a single-file purchase.
For a deeper account of how priority disputes actually run, and why most evidence fails under challenge, see our guide to proving you created something.
Protecting lots of work? See what Provlyn does →