PDF Tool

PDF to Text

Extract selectable text from a PDF file in your browser. Copy the text or download it as a plain .txt file without uploading the PDF.

Runs in browserText extractionFree & no signup

Input

Drop a PDF here

or click to browse

Settings

This extracts selectable PDF text. For scanned images inside a PDF, use the PDF OCR tool.

How to extract text from a PDF

Works on PDFs with selectable text — the kind where you can click and drag to highlight words. For scanned PDFs (images of pages), use the PDF OCR tool instead.

01
Upload your PDF
Drop the file in or click to browse. The PDF is processed entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
02
Click Extract Text
The tool reads each page and pulls out the text content. For a 10-page PDF this takes a second or two.
03
Review the output
Text is shown page by page. Complex layouts — multi-column articles, tables, sidebars — may come out in a different order than they appear visually. That's a limitation of how PDFs store text internally.
04
Copy or download as TXT
Copy the text directly, or download it as a plain .txt file.

What can you use it for?

Copying from locked PDFs

Some PDFs disable text selection in the viewer but still contain selectable text internally. This tool extracts it regardless.

Research and note-taking

Pull text from papers, reports, and guides into your notes app or document editor without retyping.

Feeding text into other tools

Extract the text, then paste it into a summarizer, grammar checker, or translation tool.

Searching across a document

Some PDF viewers have poor search. Extract the text and use Ctrl+F in a plain text editor instead.

Frequently asked questions

Free, no account needed.

No. Text extraction runs entirely in your browser using PDF.js. Your file never leaves your device.

This tool extracts text that's already embedded in the PDF as selectable text. PDF OCR uses AI to recognize text from scanned page images. If you can highlight text in your PDF viewer, use this tool. If the pages are scanned images, use PDF OCR.

PDFs don't store text in reading order — they store it by position on the page. Multi-column layouts, tables, and sidebars often come out jumbled. This is a fundamental limitation of the PDF format, not a bug in the tool.

Some PDFs use custom fonts or encode text as glyphs that don't map to standard characters. In those cases, the extracted text may be incomplete or unreadable. PDF OCR handles these better.

Yes, in any modern mobile browser.

Report an Issue

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How to extract text from a PDF

Works on PDFs with selectable text — the kind where you can click and drag to highlight words. For scanned PDFs (images of pages), use the PDF OCR tool instead.

Upload your PDF

Drop the file in or click to browse. The PDF is processed entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.

Click Extract Text

The tool reads each page and pulls out the text content. For a 10-page PDF this takes a second or two.

Review the output

Text is shown page by page. Complex layouts — multi-column articles, tables, sidebars — may come out in a different order than they appear visually. That's a limitation of how PDFs store text internally.

Copy or download as TXT

Copy the text directly, or download it as a plain .txt file.