Get the words out of a PDF to quote, translate, search, or paste into a document or an AI tool. Download a .txt file or copy everything at once.
PDF to text at a glance
| Price | Free, no sign-up, no watermark, no daily limit |
|---|---|
| Accepts | |
| Largest file | 200 MB per file, several files at once |
| Where it runs | In your browser: files are never uploaded |
| Works on | Any modern browser on iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac and Linux |
| Send the result | Download it, or send it free with a link or by email (up to 20 GB) |
How to convert PDF to text
- Choose or drop one or more PDFs.
- Choose one text file, or one per page, and which pages.
- Press Extract text.
- Copy the text from the preview, or download or send the .txt file.
Which PDFs work
PDFs made by a computer (exported from Word or Google Docs, saved from a browser, e-books, invoices, bank statements) contain their text, and it is extracted exactly. Scanned PDFs are pictures of pages: they contain no text to extract, and reading them needs OCR (optical character recognition). The result tells you which pages had no text; run those through the free OCR PDF tool, which recognises the words and can also give you a searchable PDF.
What the text file looks like
- Plain UTF-8 text, so accents and non-Latin scripts come out correctly.
- Lines follow the lines on the page; each page can start with a “--- Page 3 ---” marker.
- Formatting such as bold, fonts, images and tables is not kept: tables become text separated by spaces.
- Multi-column layouts are read in the order the PDF stores them, which is usually column by column.
Private documents stay private
Contracts, statements and medical letters are processed by your browser with pdf.js, the PDF engine used by Firefox, and never uploaded. For a picture of each page instead, use PDF to JPG; to pull out a few pages as a new PDF, use Extract pages.
How this compares
| This tool | Online converters (e.g. iLovePDF, Smallpdf or Adobe Acrobat online) | Desktop apps (e.g. Adobe Acrobat Pro) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your file is uploaded | No | Yes, to their servers | No |
| Install or account | None | Account for some features | Install needed |
| Watermark or daily limits | None | Common on free plans | Depends on the app |
Plans of other services change; check their sites. More pdf tools.
Frequently asked questions
How do I extract text from a PDF?
Add the PDF and press Extract text. Copy the text from the preview or download it as a .txt file.
Why is my text file empty?
The PDF is probably scanned: its pages are images. Run it through the free OCR PDF tool, which recognises the text.
Does it keep the formatting?
No. You get plain text with line breaks; fonts, images and layout are not kept.
Can I get one file per page?
Yes. Choose “One file per page”, then save or send only the pages you need.
Is my PDF uploaded?
No. The text is extracted on your device.
Need to send a big file?
Send files up to 20 GB with a download link or by email. Free, no account needed, original quality.
Send large files free