Favorites
Back to tools
PDF to Text Converter – Extract Text from PDF Online Free
Pull the text out of a PDF as plain text you can copy or save as .txt. Line breaks and paragraph gaps are kept, and you can add “--- Page N ---” markers between pages. It reads the PDF’s text layer in your browser; scanned image-only PDFs have no text to extract.
How to use it
- Choose a PDF or drop it onto the box. Extraction starts right away and shows which page it’s reading.
- For long PDFs you can press Stop to keep just the pages read so far.
- Turn “Page separators” on or off to include page markers.
- Click Copy to put the text on your clipboard, or “Download .txt” to save it.
Common Use Cases
- Copy text from a report or article into your notes
- Get plain text for translation or proofreading
- Check the word count of a PDF document
- Reuse text from contracts, manuals or forms
Frequently Asked Questions
Will this work on scanned PDFs?▼
No. Scanned PDFs are pictures of pages with no text layer, and this tool doesn’t do OCR (reading text from images). It tells you when a PDF or some of its pages look scanned.
Does the formatting stay intact?▼
You get plain text: line breaks and paragraph gaps are kept, but fonts, tables and images are not. Multi-column pages may come out column by column.
Can I download the result?▼
Yes. Copy it to the clipboard or download it as a .txt file named after your PDF.
Does it work with password-protected PDFs?▼
PDFs that need a password to open can’t be read here. Remove the password first and try again.
Is there a page limit?▼
No fixed limit. Long PDFs are processed page by page with a progress indicator, and you can stop early to keep what has been read so far.
Why use this tool?
- Keeps line breaks and paragraph spacing instead of one long run-on block
- Optional page separators, plus word and character counts
- Warns you when a PDF is scanned (no text layer) or when some pages have no text
- Handles long documents with progress and a Stop button
- Runs in your browser — the PDF is never uploaded
Privacy & Security
The PDF is read on your device. Neither the file nor the extracted text is uploaded.
Related Tools
How was this tool?
Your feedback helps us make it better.
Have further opinions? Email me at hello@everythingbagel.app