Convert PDF to text
A free tool that extracts the text from a PDF and converts it into a text (TXT) file. Pages that have text are extracted as they are, and the text on scanned pages is read with OCR (optical character recognition). Your PDF is processed in your browser and never uploaded. OCR can read up to 200 pages at a time (30 pages on devices where processing takes longer). You can open PDFs of up to 200 MB per file (100 MB on phones and tablets).
Only when a PDF has pages with no text (such as scanned pages) or with garbled text does the first run download an AI model (about 17 MB) from this site; later runs use the copy stored in your browser. Your PDFs are never uploaded.
Settings
How to use
- 1
Add PDFs
Choose or drop the PDFs to convert to text. You can add several PDFs at once. Your PDFs are never uploaded.
- 2
Choose the document language and page breaks
Under "Document language", choose the language the PDF is written in (used when reading scanned pages). To convert only some pages, enter them in "Page range". Choose what goes between pages under "Page breaks".
- 3
Convert and save
Press "Run" to create a TXT file with the text of the PDF. Save it with "Save", or copy all of it with "Copy text". If scanned pages were read, you can check the recognized lines with "Check the recognized text".
About converting PDF to text
Pages that have text are extracted with PDFium, the PDF engine also used in Chrome, without an AI model. Pages with no text and pages whose text is garbled (selecting the text gives different characters) are read with PaddleOCR's text recognition model (PP-OCRv6, Apache-2.0), which runs in your browser. Only then does the first run download the AI model (about 17 MB) from this site; later runs use the copy stored in your browser. For PDFs where many pages have text, the tool asks before downloading the AI model. On devices that cannot use the GPU (WebGPU), processing runs on the CPU and takes longer than on the GPU.
For pages that already have an OCR text layer, that text is extracted. For pages that mix text and images, the text is extracted and the parts that do not overlap the text are read. If there are more pages to read with OCR than can be read at once, pages with no text are read from the start, and the numbers of the pages not read are shown. The saved file is a UTF-8 text file (.txt). You can choose what goes between pages under "Page breaks" (by default, a separator line such as "--- 1 / 3 ---").
Specifications of this tool
- Input
- Output
- TXT
- Limits
- No limit on the number of files (batch processing). Up to 200 MB per file (100 MB on phones and tablets). Up to 200 pages read with OCR at a time (30 pages on devices that process on the CPU; the numbers of the pages beyond that are shown)
- Free, no sign-up, no app to install
- Files are never uploaded (processed in your browser)
Frequently asked questions
Is my PDF sent to a server?
No. Opening the PDF, extracting the text and reading the text on scanned pages all happen in the browser on your device. Statistics that help us fix bugs (the page count range, the ranges of how many pages had text extracted and how many were read with OCR, the range of the time per page, error types and so on) are sent to this site's server. They do not include the content of the PDF, the extracted text, the recognized text, file names, passwords or the page ranges you enter. You can turn the statistics off with the "Send processing statistics" switch at the bottom of the page.
Can it extract text from a scanned PDF?
Yes. Pages with no text and pages whose text is garbled are read with OCR (optical character recognition). It is made for printed text written horizontally. It also reads pages of vertical text, but with more errors than horizontal text, and it can miss punctuation. Handwritten text is not supported. To make a PDF searchable and keep it as a PDF, use "OCR PDF".
Can it extract text from a password-protected PDF or one the author has restricted?
Yes. A password-protected PDF opens once you enter its open password. If the author has restricted copying and extraction, the tool does not extract the text until you enter the permissions password. This tool does not guess passwords, so if you do not know the permissions password, ask the person who created the PDF. A text (TXT) file cannot carry a password or restrictions, so anyone can open the file you save. Text hidden under annotations such as black boxes is also extracted if it is still in the file as text, so to delete text from the file, use "Redact PDF".
Can the extracted text contain errors?
Yes. On pages read with OCR, some characters can be misread or missed depending on the text size, the scan resolution, and stains or skew on the paper. Numbers spaced widely apart in tables are misread more often than other text. When "Japanese" is chosen as the document language, characters outside the JIS level 1 and 2 kanji sets and emoji can be read as similar-looking characters. Columns and tables can come out in a different order from the reading order. Pages that have text follow the order stored in the PDF, and on pages read with OCR, a table with long cells can come out one column at a time. Press "Check the recognized text" to see the lines read with OCR outlined on the page, with the lines more likely to contain errors shown in a different color.
Help us improve the service
If a conversion fails, sending us the circumstances helps us track down the cause. Knowing which devices and formats fail most often, and how long processing takes, lets us revise the supported formats and fix the bugs behind them. If you don't mind, leaving this on is a real help.
What is sent
- The tool you used and the settings you chose (output format, quality, etc.)
- Your device specs (GPU, memory, core count)
- The input format with a rough size
- How many files succeeded or failed and how long it took
- The error type and details when something fails
What is never sent
- The files themselves and file names
- The text in PDFs, the text you rewrote or redacted, passwords, font names and the page ranges you enter
- The recognized text and the positions of the recognized lines
- IP addresses
The data goes only to this site's own server, never to a third-party service.
For the full list, including the details each tool sends, see “Processing statistics” in the privacy policy.
Details sent by this tool (counts, times, kinds and yes/no only)
In addition to “What is sent”, this tool sends the following details.
- PDF tools (all)
- The page count range, whether editing is restricted, whether a permissions password was entered, and whether the PDF is signed or encrypted.
- PDF to text
- The numbers of inputs and outputs, of pages with text extracted, pages that already had OCR text, pages mixing text and images, pages read with OCR, pages read with no text found, pages with garbled text, blank pages, pages rearranged as vertical text, pages whose orientation was corrected, pages not read because the AI model was not downloaded and pages not read because they were beyond how many pages can be read at once, of lines and characters read, and of areas and characters not read because they overlapped existing text or annotations (all as ranges), the ranges of the share of vertical lines and of lines more likely to contain errors, the ranges of the time per page and of the AI model load time, the AI model type and version and whether it was downloaded, whether the tool asked before downloading the AI model, the range of the rendering resolution and whether it was lowered, the range of the number of parts an image was split into to find text, whether the estimated time exceeded 15 minutes, and whether the GPU became unavailable.