--- title: "Extract text from a PDF" description: "Copy all the text out of a PDF into plain text you can paste or save as .txt. Free and private — the PDF is read in your browser, never uploaded." canonical: "https://spirikle.com/tools/pdf-to-text/" last-updated: "2026-10-04" --- # Extract text from a PDF Pull all the text out of a PDF so you can copy, search or save it as a .txt file. **The PDF is read on your device.** **PDF to text** is an interactive tool that runs in a web browser at https://spirikle.com/tools/pdf-to-text/. It processes files on the visitor's own device; nothing is uploaded. There is nothing to call from Markdown — open the page to use it. ## How to extract text from a PDF ### 1. Add your PDF Drop the PDF onto the box above, or choose it from your device. ### 2. Extract Press Extract text. Every page is read in order. ### 3. Copy or download Copy the text straight from the box, or download it as a .txt file. ## Text PDFs and scanned PDFs A PDF made from a document — exported from Word, a website, an invoice system — carries its text, and this reads it out. Line breaks follow the layout of the page, so columns and tables may need tidying after you paste. A scanned PDF is different: each page is a photograph, with no text inside to extract. Getting words out of a picture needs OCR (text recognition). The tool tells you when that is the case, and Scan Clan can do it on your phone. ## Questions ### Why did it find no text? The PDF is almost certainly a scan — pictures of pages rather than text. Copying text from a picture needs OCR, which this tool does not do. ### Is formatting kept? No — the result is plain text. Bold, fonts, images and tables are not carried over, though the reading order and line breaks are. ### Are my PDFs uploaded anywhere? No. The tool runs entirely in your web browser: your files are opened and processed on your own phone or computer, and nothing is sent to a server — not to ours, not to anyone else's. The page is even set up so the browser itself blocks it from sending data elsewhere. Close the tab and nothing is left behind. ### Is it really free? Yes, completely. There is no sign-up, no daily limit, no watermark and no paid version of this tool. Because the work happens on your own device rather than on our servers, it costs us nothing to run, so there is nothing to charge for. ## Related tools - [PDF to JPG](https://spirikle.com/tools/pdf-to-jpg/): Turn each page of a PDF into a JPG image at the resolution you choose. - [Edit PDF metadata](https://spirikle.com/tools/edit-pdf-metadata/): See and change a PDF's title, author, subject and keywords, or remove them before you share it. - [Split PDF](https://spirikle.com/tools/split-pdf/): Split a PDF by page ranges, into single pages, or every few pages. - [Merge PDF](https://spirikle.com/tools/merge-pdf/): Combine several PDFs into one, in the order you choose. [All PDF tools](/tools/pdf/) · [All free tools](/tools/) > **Doing this on your phone?** Scan Clan, our free document scanner app, turns paper into clean PDFs with your camera and can sign, compress and share them — no ads and no subscription. [Get it on Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spirikle.scanclan). --- _Scan Clan · https://spirikle.com/tools/pdf-to-text/ · published by Spirikle · support@spirikle.com_