Extract text from a PDF
Get every word out of a PDF. Digital files are instant; scans are recognised with OCR.
Drop your PDF files here or click to browse
Stays on your device — nothing is uploaded
Select several files to process them together
How do I extract text from a PDF for free?
Open PDFkitt's Extract Text from PDF tool (pdfkitt.com/extract-text-from-pdf/): choose the PDF, pick the language if it is a scan, extract, then download or copy. It is free, needs no account and adds no watermark, and it runs entirely in your browser — the file is never uploaded to a server.
- Price
- Free — no trial, no paid tier, no watermark
- Account
- Not needed
- File upload
- None — processed on your device, in the browser
- Input
- PDF files (several at once)
- Limits
- No daily quota and no file-count limit
- Works on
- Windows, macOS, Linux, iPhone, iPad and Android, in any modern browser
Updated · by the PDFkitt team
Quoting a report, feeding a document to a script, pasting a scanned letter into an email: you just need the text. This tool reads the text layer of a digital PDF in an instant and, for pages that have none (scans), recognises the text with OCR automatically.
The result is a plain .txt file, page by page, that you can download or copy. Nothing is uploaded, which is what you want when the document is a bank statement or a medical report.
How to extract text from a PDF
- Choose the PDF Digital or scanned.
- Pick the language if it is a scan For OCR.
- Extract Instant for digital PDFs; a few seconds per page for scans.
- Download or copy Plain text.
Why use PDFkitt to extract Text from PDF?
The file is processed inside your browser tab. Disconnect from the internet after the page loads and it still works.
No signup, no email, no daily quota, no page limit, no watermark. Use it as often as you like.
Phone, tablet or desktop, in Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox. Nothing to install.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know if my PDF is a scan?
Try selecting text in a viewer: if you cannot, it is a scan. The Auto setting handles both.
Is my scan uploaded for OCR?
No. The recognition engine runs inside your browser tab. Only the language data file is downloaded, and it is cached for next time.
How accurate is it?
Very good on clean printed text (typically 95–99%); lower on faxes, skewed photos and small fonts. Rotate and crop first if needed.