PDF to Text (Extract Text from PDF)
Get the text out of a PDF to quote it, translate it, analyse it or reuse it elsewhere. The text is shown page by page and can be copied or downloaded as a .txt file.
Runs in your browser
How to use
- Drop a PDF.
- Choose whether to add page separators.
- Click Extract text.
- Copy the text or download the .txt file.
How it works
Text is read from the PDF's text layer with pdf.js and reassembled into lines based on each fragment's position on the page. Multi-column layouts and tables may come out in reading order that differs from the visual layout.
Scanned PDFs contain only images of text and have no text layer; the tool detects this and tells you that OCR (optical character recognition) would be needed.
Files are processed in your browser with the open-source pdf-lib and pdf.js libraries — they are never uploaded.
Examples
- Research paper
- Extract a paper's text to count words or paste into a translation tool.
Common uses
- Copying text from locked-layout PDFs
- Word counts of PDF documents
- Feeding text into other tools
Privacy & security
This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files and text are never uploaded to our servers — processing happens on your device and results are created locally. How each tool handles files
Frequently asked questions
Why is the text empty?
The PDF is probably a scan (an image). OCR support is planned.
Is formatting kept?
No — the output is plain text. Use PDF to Word (coming soon) for formatted text.
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