PDF to text extractor
Pull the selectable text out of a PDF and get it as plain text you can copy or download. Drop in a PDF, extract, and the text from every page is yours — all processed in your browser.
How to use PDF to Text
- 1
Add your PDF
Drag a PDF into the drop area, or click to browse for one.
- 2
Extract the text
Click extract and the selectable text from every page is gathered.
- 3
Review it
See the full text, ready to read or edit.
- 4
Copy or download
Copy the text to your clipboard or download it as a .txt file.
Get the text out of a PDF
PDFs are designed to look the same everywhere, which is great for sharing but frustrating when you actually need the words inside. Selecting and copying text from a PDF often goes wrong — the selection jumps around, picks up the wrong order, or grabs nothing at all — and copying page after page by hand is tedious. This tool extracts the text for you in one step. You drop in a PDF and it reads the selectable text from every page, gathering it into a single block you can copy or download. Instead of fighting with a PDF viewer's clumsy selection, you get the whole document's text at once, ready to paste into an editor, a document, a translator, a search, or anywhere else you need the words rather than the formatted page. It turns a locked-feeling document back into editable, reusable text, which is exactly what you want when the content matters more than the layout.
Copy it or save it as a file
Once the text is extracted, you can take it whichever way suits the task. A single click copies the entire text to your clipboard, ready to paste straight into wherever you are working — a word processor, an email, a note, a chat, a form. Alternatively, you can download the text as a plain .txt file, which is handy when you want to keep it, hand it to a program that reads text files, or archive the content separately from the original PDF. Plain text is the most universal, lightweight and future-proof format there is: it opens anywhere, takes almost no space, and carries none of the complexity of the original PDF. Having both options means the tool fits both the quick 'I just need to grab this paragraph' case and the more deliberate 'I need the whole document as a text file' case. Either way, the extracted words are immediately usable, freed from the fixed page they were trapped in.
Works best with real, selectable text
It helps to understand how PDF text extraction works so you know what to expect. PDFs come in two broad kinds. Most are 'digital' PDFs created from a document or a web page, where the text is stored as actual characters — this is the text you can normally select, and it is exactly what this tool pulls out cleanly and accurately. The other kind is 'scanned' PDFs, which are really just photographs of pages: they look like text to your eye, but to a computer they are images with no characters inside, so there is nothing to extract. This tool is honest about that distinction — if it finds no selectable text, it tells you the PDF is likely scanned rather than silently returning nothing. For the vast majority of PDFs, which contain real text, extraction works beautifully. Knowing the difference means you understand the result: clean text from a digital PDF, and a clear explanation when a document turns out to be images rather than words.
Private by design — read in your browser
PDFs frequently contain sensitive material: contracts, reports, statements, personal records, confidential business documents. Uploading such a file to a server just to pull out its text would mean exposing the whole document to a third party. In1 extracts the text entirely in your browser, reading the PDF on your own device using a PDF engine that runs locally. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and there is no account or sign-up. Because there is no upload step, extraction is fast and works exactly the same offline as online. This local-only approach is especially important for documents, which are so often private — and it means you can pull the text out of a confidential PDF without trusting it to an online service that might store or process it elsewhere. You get the convenience of an instant extractor with the assurance that your document never leaves your computer. Extract text from as many PDFs as you like, free and without limits, with every file handled privately on your own machine.
Who extracts text from PDFs?
The need is constant across study, work and everyday tasks. Students pull quotes and passages out of PDF readings, papers and textbooks to use in their own writing and notes. Researchers extract text from articles and reports for analysis, citation or translation. Office workers lift content out of PDF documents to reuse in other files, emails or systems rather than retyping it. People translating documents extract the text so they can paste it into a translation tool. Developers and data workers pull text from PDFs to process or search it. Anyone who has tried to copy from a PDF and ended up with a jumbled mess, or who needs the words from a document without the formatting, has a use for a clean extractor. Because the tool gets the full text of every page in one step, lets you copy or download it, is honest about scanned files, and keeps everything private, it covers the whole range of reasons people need to free the text from inside a PDF.
Higher limits, batch processing and an API are on the way. Want early access?