PDF to Text Converter — Extract Text from PDF Free Online

Upload your PDF and the tool detects whether it contains a real text layer or just scanned images. Text-layer PDFs export instantly. Image-only PDFs (scanned books, photographed receipts, old reports) run through OCR automatically. Either way you get a clean .txt file with paragraphs, line breaks and section spacing preserved.

Yes. If the PDF is image-only (common for scans, photographed pages or fax exports), the OCR engine kicks in automatically — you do not need a separate tool. Pick the language printed in the document from the language picker, which lists more than 30 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Hindi; each run reads one language.

Paragraph breaks, blank lines between sections, bullet point markers and numbered list prefixes are preserved as plain text. Headings come through in upper-case or as their original casing depending on the source font. Visual emphasis (bold, italic) is not encoded in plain text — for that, use the PDF to Word converter instead.

Not directly: this tool has no password field. First remove the password with our Unlock PDF tool (you need to know the password), then upload the unlocked copy here. Locked PDFs without the password cannot be processed — no password-cracking is performed.

Page count and file size are both limited to keep conversion reliable. Free supports up to 50 pages and 20 MB, Premium 500 pages and 50 MB, Pro 1000 pages and 120 MB, and Enterprise 2000 pages. Split larger documents with the PDF Split tool and process each section separately.

Processing happens on secure servers and files are removed under our Security policy — unless you explicitly share a result, which keeps it at a public link anyone who has it can open without automatic expiration while Pixoate provides the sharing service. The .txt output is yours — no watermark, no attribution, no tracking. Researchers, journalists, lawyers and students use the tool to extract text from confidential reports knowing the source PDF is not retained beyond that window.

Yes. Open the Settings tab, choose your document's language and OCR engine, and the page is read in that script — more than 30 languages are listed, including non-Latin and right-to-left ones. If the first pass misreads accented or non-English characters, switch the language, which clears the previous result, and press Extract text again.

Formatted view keeps the page's original layout — columns, spacing and line positions — which helps with tables and receipts. Plain view gives simple line-broken text that's easier to paste into a document or chatbot. Toggle between them, then copy the text or download it as a .txt file.

This tool hands you the raw text to copy or save as .txt. If you'd rather keep the original PDF but make it Ctrl+F searchable, run it through the Image to Searchable PDF tool — it adds an invisible OCR text layer over the scan so the page looks identical while the words become selectable.

Start with Default and your document's language for common Latin-script languages — it's fast and accurate for everyday text. If the output looks garbled or the script is non-Latin (Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Cyrillic), switch to Engine 1 or Engine 2, select the matching language from the picker, and press Extract text again — different engines are tuned for different scripts, so trying both takes seconds.

The output box is fully editable, so you can quickly clean up an OCR mistake or trim a section right on screen. Copy to clipboard always copies exactly what's currently in the box, edits included — but Download .txt saves the original file produced by the last Engine/Language run, not your on-screen edits. To keep a correction, use Copy and paste it into your own .txt file, or if the mistake is systematic, switch the Language or Engine, which clears the result, and choose Convert file again instead of hand-editing.

Upload your PDF and let the extractor pull the text — OCR runs automatically on scanned or image-only pages — then download the result as a plain .txt file. The file opens in Notepad, TextEdit or any code editor with no special software. Used this way it works as a simple pdf to notepad converter when you just want raw, copy-ready text without formatting or images.

Yes — convert, preview and download PDF text without creating an account. Free covers OCR on scanned PDFs, Formatted and Plain views and the .txt download. Premium adds longer documents and batch work.

Yes — Pixoate supports batch and bulk processing. Switch to Batch mode, add up to 60 PDFs on Premium or 200 on Pro, set your options once, and every PDF is processed with the same settings before you download a single ZIP. Bulk processing is a Premium feature; the output uses the same quality and settings as single mode.

Yes — with bulk processing you configure the settings a single time and they apply to every item in the batch — up to 60 PDFs on Premium or 200 on Pro. There is no need to repeat the setup per item, and Temporary uploaded and generated files are processed securely and deleted automatically.

Almost always one of three things. The file is over the 20 MB free upload limit — Premium takes 50 MB and Pro 120 MB. The format is not one this tool accepts, so check the list shown on the upload panel. Or the file is not really the format its name says: renaming a file does not change what is inside it, and that is the reason a valid-looking PDF gets refused.

A PDF stores where every character sits on the page, not the paragraphs and styles a word processor works in, so converting means rebuilding that structure by inference. Complex columns, tables and text wrapped around images are where it drifts. If the appearance matters more than editability, choose the visual mode; if you need to type into it, choose the editable mode and expect to fix the odd heading.

PDF to Text supports free standard use within the published processing allowances. Free downloads are clean — no watermark. No signup is required for standard tool use. Photo effects and AI edits have a web-size limit on Free, with the original-resolution result available through Premium or one credit. Crop, resize, rotate, compress and convert stay full size. Premium supports batches of up to 60 files, with the applicable plan limits shown before processing.

No — PDF to Text runs in the browser on desktop and phone. There is nothing to install, no trial to start, and no license to buy before you can see whether it does what you need. Try it on the file you are actually stuck with rather than a sample.

Upload the PDF, set the language and select Extract text, then use the Copy Text button. Pages that are only pictures, such as scans or a photo of a page saved as a PDF, are read with text recognition, so this works even when your PDF viewer will not select any words. If you only have a JPG or PNG photo, use Image to Text instead.

Extract its text here, copy it into a document editor and correct it there, because a scan has no editable text of its own. PDF to Word can keep a scan's exact look, but its words stay pictures and cannot be edited. Proofread recognized text before you rely on it.

This tool reads the words out of a PDF so you can edit them elsewhere, and it does not change the PDF itself. To change existing text or permanently black it out, use PDF Editor, which has text editing and a Redact tool. For a scan, extract the text here and edit it in a document editor.

Extracting the text, copying it and downloading Text (.txt), Markdown (.md) or Word (.docx) files are free. The Excel and CSV downloads are document exports with their own allowance, and a very long PDF can go over your plan's page limit.

As a text extractor it takes out words, not pages. To extract pages from a PDF, use Split PDF, which saves selected pages as their own file; then upload that smaller PDF here if you also need its words.

This tool returns text rather than a new PDF. To make a scan searchable, render its pages as pictures with PDF to Images, then upload those pictures to the Searchable PDF maker, which builds a new PDF with a hidden text layer. Check the recognized words before you rely on them.

Open this page in your phone's browser, upload the PDF from your files, choose the language and select Extract text. Copy Text copies the words, or you can pick a format under Download as. Nothing needs to be installed.

Upload the PDF, select Extract text and choose Text (.txt) under Download as. The result separates the pages with # Page markers, so you can see where each page starts. Copy Text puts the same words on your clipboard if you would rather paste them into another document.

It reads the text of a PDF you already have and does not capture paper with a camera, so it suits pages that are already scans. To scan paper pages into a PDF, use Scan to PDF, then bring the file back here if you need the words extracted.

It reads printed text far more reliably than handwriting, so PDF handwriting to text results have gaps and need checking line by line. Handwriting OCR is the tool made for photos of handwritten notes, including cursive.