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PDF → plain text

Drop a PDF, get every text block extracted. Paragraph structure preserved when possible. In-browser via pdf.js.

Text extraction from PDF is what makes copy-paste and full-text search possible. This tool uses pdf.js to read every text stream, reconstruct paragraph boundaries where the layout permits, and give you a clean plain-text output. Perfect for feeding PDFs into LLMs, populating search indexes, or just grabbing quotes.

Paragraph reconstruction

Naive text extraction from PDFs produces one line per glyph run, which is unusable. The tool reassembles lines into paragraphs based on line spacing, indentation, and hyphen removal. Works well on single-column documents; multi-column layouts (papers, magazines) may need manual cleanup.

Scanned PDFs

Scanned PDFs contain images, not text — extraction produces nothing usable. Run the OCR PDF tool first to make the file searchable, then extract text. The tool warns when a PDF appears to be scan-only.

Output options

Copy to clipboard, download as .txt, or download with page markers (--- Page N --- separators). Toggle Unicode NFC normalization for cleaner output when the source uses combining diacritics.

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Tool FAQs

Everything you need to know about using PDF to Text Converter.

Does my PDF get uploaded to a server?+

No. This tool runs entirely in your browser using pdf-lib and pdf.js loaded as WebAssembly. Open your browser's Network tab while processing and you'll see zero uploads — your PDFs never leave your device. That's why confidential contracts, tax records, and internal docs are safe to run through this tool.

Does it work on scanned PDFs?+

No — scanned PDFs are images. Use the OCR PDF tool first to add an invisible text layer, then extract.

Can I process multiple PDFs at once?+

Yes — batch mode is available on the Pro plan. Free users process one file at a time. Pro unlocks unlimited concurrent PDF processing across every tool in the suite.