PDF to Text Free
Pull the text out of a PDF so you can copy, search or edit it elsewhere.
How to use it
- Choose your PDF, or drag it onto the page.
- Check the result, then press Download.
About PDF to Text
Copying from a PDF in a viewer often produces jumbled lines and lost spacing. Pulling the text out directly gives you the words in a form you can paste into a document, search properly, or feed into another tool.
Good to know
- This only works on PDFs that contain real text. A scanned page is a picture of text and yields nothing.
- If you get no output, your PDF is a scan and would need character recognition, which this does not do.
- Layout such as columns and tables usually does not survive; the words do.
Questions
Why did I get nothing back?
Your PDF is almost certainly a scan. The pages are images, so there is no text stored to extract.
How can I tell if my PDF has real text?
Try selecting a word in a PDF viewer. If you can highlight individual words, the text is there.
Will tables keep their layout?
Usually not. Extraction recovers words and rough order, not page structure.
Can it read a scanned document?
No. That needs optical character recognition, which this tool does not perform.
Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No. Everything runs inside your browser using your own device. Your file never leaves it, and we never see or store it. You can even disconnect from the internet and the tool still works.
Is it really free?
Yes. No account, no daily limit, no watermark on your files. The site is paid for by ads.