Extract Text from PDF Free
Copy text from PDF documents without formatting issues. Works on any PDF with a text layer.
Drop a PDF file to extract text
Extracting...
About Extract Text
Extracting text from a PDF is the first step in repurposing old documents, quoting sources, or analyzing content. ILikePdf Extract Text pulls the text layer from any PDF — all pages or a range — and delivers it as copy-ready plain text or a .txt download. Extraction runs in the browser, so content with any level of sensitivity stays on your device. For scanned documents with no text layer, run the OCR tool first to unlock the content.
How to extract text from a PDF Extract Text
Common use cases for Extract Text
- Pull the text out of a PDF to paste into a document or email.
- Repurpose content from old PDFs that lost their source files.
- Check the actual text content of a file before processing it further.
- Grab quotes and references from research papers.
Pro tips
- Scanned PDFs contain no text — run OCR first to make the text extractable.
- The extract is performed locally, so content stays private.
- Download the .txt output to use the text in other tools.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Extract all text content from any PDF — free, no limits, no sign-up, and completely offline in-browser.
The tool uses two methods: direct text extraction for digital PDFs and OCR (optical character recognition) for scanned documents. Both run locally via WebAssembly.
Yes. For scanned PDFs (image-based pages), the built-in OCR engine recognizes text from images automatically. Accuracy depends on image quality and font clarity.
Export extracted text as plain TXT, CSV, or JSON. Each format preserves page structure and ordering for downstream use in analysis or data processing.
No page limit. Process PDFs of any length — the only constraint is your device memory. Extraction is fast even for documents with hundreds of pages.