PDF Tools

Extract Text from PDF

Pull all the readable text out of a PDF and copy or download it as plain text, entirely inside your browser.

Private by default Instant results No signup
Extract Text from PDFLive
Drop a PDF file or click to uploadPDF files only
Overview

How does this text extractor work?

Your PDF is parsed directly in the browser, and the real text objects on every page — the actual characters stored in the file, not an image of them — are pulled out and joined together. Nothing is uploaded to a server at any point.

Guide

How to use it

1Upload a PDF file
2Click Extract text
3Review the result in the text box
4Copy it, or download it as a .txt file
Why it helps

Features & benefits

Extracts text from every page in one pass
Optional page markers to keep track of where text came from
Copy to clipboard or download as a plain .txt file
Shows a word and character count
100% private — nothing leaves the device

Why this runs entirely in your browser

PDF files often contain sensitive or confidential documents, so nothing is uploaded to a server. Parsing and extracting text all happens locally using your browser's own processing power, directly in the tab.

Common uses

Pulling a quote or passage out of a report without retyping it, getting a PDF into a plain-text editor for further work, checking a document's word count, or copying contract text into another document.

Frequently asked questions

A few things people usually want to know before trusting the numbers.

If a PDF was created by scanning a paper document, the pages are stored as images with no underlying text layer at all — there's nothing for this tool to extract, since it reads real text objects rather than performing optical character recognition on images.

When enabled, each page's text is prefixed with a line like "--- Page 3 ---" so you can tell which page a piece of text came from. Turn it off if you just want one continuous block of text.

No. Layout, fonts, columns, and spacing from the original PDF are not preserved — the output is plain text with the words in reading order, which is usually what's needed for copying or searching content.

PDFs that require a password just to open can't be processed, since the tool can't read their contents without that password. PDFs that only have owner or permission restrictions but no open password can usually still be read.

No. All extraction happens locally in your browser using JavaScript running on your own device. Nothing you upload here is ever sent to a server, stored remotely, or shared with anyone — closing the tab clears everything.