Extract Text from PDF
Pull the text layer out of a PDF and save it as a clean UTF-8 text file. Lines are rebuilt from the page layout, you can pick a page range and keep or drop
Drop your PDF file here
or click to browse files
Pull the text out of a PDF so you can edit it, search it or feed it into another program. Layout is reconstructed line by line and page by page, and the result can be copied or downloaded as a plain text file.
Useful when a report only exists as a PDF, when you need to quote a passage, or when you want to check a document without opening a reader. Text is read from the file itself, so it works on digitally created PDFs; a scan contains no text layer and needs OCR instead.
How to extract text from a PDF
Add your PDF
Extract the text
Copy it or download the .txt file
FAQ
Why is my scanned PDF empty?
A scan is a picture of text with no text layer, so there are no characters to extract. Such files need optical character recognition (OCR) first.
Is the layout preserved?
Lines and page breaks are kept, but complex multi-column layouts and tables come out as a reading-order approximation. Expect to tidy up tables by hand.
Can I extract only some pages?
Yes, enter a page range and only those pages are processed - useful for long reports where you need one section.
Does it work with non-Latin text?
Yes, as long as the PDF embeds the fonts needed to display the characters. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cyrillic and Arabic documents generally extract correctly.
Is there a size limit?
The practical limit is your device memory. Long documents extract page by page and can be read as they arrive.
Is my PDF uploaded?
No, extraction runs in your browser.
At a glance
| Input | |
|---|---|
| Multiple files | No |
| Where it runs | In your browser - files are never uploaded |
| Works offline | Yes — once the page has loaded |
| Price | Free, no sign-up, no watermark |
Keeping text selectable and searchable
A PDF can hold real text or a picture of text, and the difference matters: real text can be selected, searched, copied and read aloud, while a scanned page cannot until someone runs OCR on it. Many "reduce size" tools silently flatten everything into images, which shrinks the file but destroys searchability and makes the text blurry when zoomed. If a document needs to stay usable - contracts, manuals, anything you may need to search later - keep text as text and compress only the images. If you are starting from a scan, run OCR first, then compress.
What actually makes a PDF large
Almost all of a bulky PDF is images, not text. A ten-page scan can be 40 MB while a 300-page text document is often under 2 MB. That is why compression targets embedded pictures: it downsamples them to a sensible resolution (150 dpi is usually enough for on-screen reading, 300 dpi only if someone will print it) and re-encodes them more efficiently. Text, bookmarks, links and form fields cost almost nothing and should never need to be removed. If a file stays large after compression, it usually contains either a lot of high-resolution images that the compression setting did not touch, or embedded fonts and attachments you can strip.