PDF to Text
Pull the text out of any PDF in seconds, then copy it or save it as a .txt file. No upload needed.
Your files never leave your device
Copying text from a PDF often goes wrong. Selections jump between columns, every line ends with a hard break, and long reports take many attempts. Converting the PDF to plain text gives you clean material to quote, translate, search, summarise or paste into a document.
The tool below reads the text layer of your PDF directly in your browser. It does not upload the file, which is important for contracts, payslips, medical letters and other private documents. You can keep the original line breaks or join lines into flowing paragraphs, limit the extraction to certain pages, and then copy the result or download it as a .txt file.
One limitation to know before you start: a scanned PDF is really a set of pictures, so it may have no text layer at all. If the result comes back empty, the PDF was probably scanned. In that case, convert the pages to images with PDF to JPG and read them with the Image to Text (OCR) tool.
or drop a PDF file here
One PDF · up to 300 MB · works with PDFs that contain real text
Copying text out of a PDF by hand is a pain: selections jump across columns, line breaks land in the middle of sentences and long documents take forever. This free PDF to Text converter extracts all the text of a PDF in one go, cleans up the line breaks if you want, and gives you a plain .txt file, without uploading your document.
Your files never leave your device. This PDF to Text tool runs 100% in your browser. There are no uploads, no accounts and no tracking inside the tool.
How to convert a PDF to text
- Open your PDF. Click Select PDF file or drop a PDF onto the box. The text of every page is extracted automatically.
- Choose the layout. Keep the original line breaks, or join into paragraphs so the text flows when you paste it into a document or email.
- Limit pages (optional). Type a page list such as 2-5 and press Extract text again to read only those pages.
- Copy or download. Edit the text if you like, then press Copy text or Download .txt.
What you get
How PDF text extraction works
A PDF does not store paragraphs the way a word processor does. It stores small runs of characters and the exact position where each run is drawn on the page. To rebuild readable text, this tool uses PDF.js, the open-source engine built by Mozilla, to read every text run with its coordinates. Runs on the same baseline are joined into a line, a space is added when there is a visible gap between runs, and a new line starts whenever the text moves down the page. In paragraph mode, consecutive lines are then merged until a blank line or a short line that ends a sentence.
All of this happens in your browser. Your PDF is read from your disk into memory, processed by JavaScript on this page and never sent to a server. That makes the tool suitable for contracts, payslips, research drafts and anything else you would rather not upload to a stranger’s website.
Text PDFs versus scanned PDFs
There are two very different kinds of PDF. A text PDF is created by software: exported from Word, saved from a browser, generated by a billing system. It contains real characters, and this tool extracts them perfectly in a fraction of a second per page. A scanned PDF is made by a scanner or a phone camera. Each page is a photograph, and there are no characters to extract at all, only pixels.
A quick test: open the PDF and try to select a single word. If you can highlight it, the text is real. If the whole page highlights as one block, or nothing happens, it is a scan. For scans, convert the pages to images with PDF to JPG and read them with Image to Text (OCR), which recognises letters in pictures, also inside your browser.
Tips for cleaner results
- Pasting into a document? Choose Join into paragraphs so the text reflows instead of breaking at the old line ends.
- Need only a chapter? Type its page range to skip the cover, contents and appendix.
- Checking length? Paste the result into our Word Counter for reading time and keyword density.
- Garbled characters? Some old PDFs embed fonts without a proper Unicode map. No extractor can recover those reliably; OCR on the page images usually works better.
Frequently asked questions
Is PDF to Text free?
Yes. It is free, with no sign-up and no page limit, because your own browser does the work.
Is my PDF uploaded?
No. The text is read on your device by PDF.js, Mozilla’s open-source PDF engine. Only the library is downloaded from a public CDN; the document itself never leaves your device.
Why is the result empty for my PDF?
Your PDF is probably a scan, so each page is a picture of text rather than real text. The tool tells you when that happens. Turn the pages into images with PDF to JPG, then read them with our Image to Text (OCR) tool.
Will tables and columns come out right?
Plain paragraphs come out cleanly. Tables and multi-column layouts are extracted in the order the text is stored in the file, which is usually left to right and top to bottom, so columns may be interleaved and table cells become lines.
What is the difference between the two layouts?
Keep line breaks reproduces each line as it appears on the page. Join into paragraphs merges lines that belong together and repairs words split with a hyphen at the end of a line, which is better for pasting into Word or Google Docs.
Does it support Arabic and other languages?
Yes, as long as the PDF contains real text. PDF.js reads Unicode text, so Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Cyrillic and accented Latin all work. Some older PDFs use fonts without proper character mapping, and their text can come out garbled in any extractor.
Can I extract text from a password-protected PDF?
Not at the moment. Open it with its password in a reader, save an unprotected copy and use that copy.
Is formatting such as bold and fonts kept?
No. The output is plain text, which is what makes it easy to paste anywhere. Use the original PDF if you need the exact look.
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By Abdullah Al-Janoubi · WorldScope Tools · Updated October 2026
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