PDF to text
Extract every word from a PDF into a plain .txt file — handy for searching, quoting, or feeding a document into another program.
Drop your PDFs here
or click to browse — one or more PDF files
Your files are processed on your own device and never sent to us. Closing this tab erases everything.
How it works
Three steps, about ten seconds
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01
Choose the PDF you want the text from.
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02
Decide whether broken lines should be joined back into paragraphs.
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03
Press Extract Text and a .txt file downloads.
No sign-up, ever
No account, no email address, no verification link. Open the page and the tool is already working. We do not want your details and we never ask for them.
Free for life
Not a trial and not a freemium tease. There is no daily cap, no file-size paywall, no watermark, and no premium tier waiting to interrupt you halfway through a job.
Fast, because nothing uploads
Your file is processed on your own device instead of travelling to a server and back. Most jobs finish before a traditional site would have finished uploading.
Questions
PDF to Text — frequently asked
I got an empty file — why?
Your PDF is a scan, which means a photograph of a page rather than stored characters. There is genuinely no text inside to extract. Recognising words in an image needs OCR, which this tool does not do.
Why is the spacing odd in places?
Many PDFs store no space characters at all — the gaps you see are drawn by positioning letters apart. Spaces are worked out from those distances, and unusual fonts or heavy letter-spacing can throw the calculation off.
Are tables kept as tables?
No. Cell contents come out as separate lines in reading order. For tabular data you want a tool that detects the grid instead.
Can I get an editable Word file instead?
Plain text is what this tool produces. It keeps no styling at all, which is exactly what you want when the goal is to search or reuse the words.
Is PDF to Text free to use?
Yes — free for life, with no catch. There is no premium tier, no trial that expires and no feature withheld behind a payment. PDF to Text does the complete job at no cost.
Do I need to create an account or sign up?
No. There is no sign-up, no email address to hand over and no account system of any kind. Open the page and pdf to text is ready to use immediately.
Is there a daily limit or a file cap?
None. Use pdf to text as many times as you like, today and every day, with no hourly cap, no queue and no watermark on what comes out. Because the processing happens on your own device rather than our servers, there is nothing for us to ration.
Other tools you might need
Merge PDF
Combine several PDFs into one document, in any order you like.
Split PDF
Pull out the pages you need, or break a PDF into single-page files.
Rotate PDF
Turn sideways or upside-down pages the right way up.
Add Page Numbers
Number the pages of a PDF that arrived without them.
Watermark PDF
Stamp DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL or your own text across every page.
PDF to Word
Get the text out of a PDF into an editable Word document.