Extract Text from a PDF, Free
Copy all the text of a PDF into a .txt file
🔒 No upload • No account • No watermark • Runs in your browser
Extract text pulls every piece of text out of a PDF and saves it as a plain text file, with a heading before each page. It is handy for searching, quoting or pasting into another program.
How to use Extract text
- Open the tool and choose your PDF.
- Press Extract text.
- Download extracted-text.txt.
- Open it in any text editor.
Features
- Page-by-page output.
- UTF-8 text file that handles most languages.
- Tells you which pages had no text.
- Private and free.
Good to know
- Scanned PDFs are pictures, so they contain no text. Run OCR PDF first, then extract the text.
- Reading order follows how the PDF stores its text, which may differ from the visual order on complex layouts.
Questions and answers
Why did I get no text?
The PDF is probably a scan. Its pages are images, so there is no text to extract.
Are tables kept?
Table text is extracted line by line. For tables use PDF to Excel.
Does it work with Hindi or other languages?
Yes, when the PDF stores the text as real characters. Some fonts store them in a way that cannot be read back.
Privacy
This tool runs inside your browser. Your file is read into your device’s memory, processed there and handed back as a download. It is not sent to a FirePDF server. You can test this by switching off your internet connection after the page has loaded and running the tool again. Read the Privacy Policy and the Security page for details.