PDF to Text

Extract all text from any digitally-created PDF — copy or download as .txt

Drop your PDF here

or click to browse — Works on digitally-created PDFs (not scanned images)

PDF to Text Converter Online Free

Need to extract text from a PDF quickly? This free tool reads the text layer directly from your PDF and presents it as plain, copyable text — no formatting, no tables, just the raw content. Useful for copying content into other documents, checking text for search engines, data extraction, or simply reading a PDF as plain text. Everything runs in your browser — your file is never uploaded.

How to Extract Text from a PDF

  1. Upload your PDF — drag it onto the upload zone or click to browse.
  2. Wait for extraction — text is extracted page by page and displayed in the text area.
  3. Copy or Download — click "Copy All Text" to copy to clipboard, or "Download .txt" to save as a text file.

Features

Full Text Extraction

Extracts all text from every page of your PDF, clearly labelled by page number for easy navigation.

Copy to Clipboard

One-click "Copy All Text" button copies the entire extracted text to your clipboard ready to paste anywhere.

Download as .txt

Save the extracted text as a plain .txt file — the same name as your PDF for easy identification.

Word & Character Count

Displays total page count, word count, and character count so you know the scale of the content extracted.

Page-by-Page

Text is extracted and labelled page by page, so you can locate content from a specific page easily.

100% Private

All extraction happens locally in your browser using pdf.js. Your PDF is never uploaded anywhere.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is my extracted text empty or garbled?

This happens when your PDF is a scanned document — it is essentially a photograph, not a real text file. PDF to Text only works on PDFs that contain a real text layer (those exported from Word, InDesign, Excel, web browsers, etc.). Scanned PDFs require OCR (Optical Character Recognition) which this tool does not perform.

Does the tool preserve formatting like bold, headings, and tables?

No. The output is plain text — all formatting, fonts, colours, tables, and layout are stripped. Only the raw characters are extracted. If you need to preserve formatting, consider using our PDF to Word tool instead.

Can I extract text from a password-protected PDF?

Only if the PDF allows text copying without a password. If the PDF is fully encrypted, you will need to remove the password protection first using a dedicated PDF tool. Some PDFs restrict copying only — these may still be unreadable.

Is there a page or file size limit?

No. All processing happens locally in your browser, so there are no server-side limits. Very large PDFs with hundreds of pages will take a few seconds to process.

Other Free PDF Tools

PDF to Word PDF to JPG PDF to PNG Compress PDF Split PDF

Processing...