PDF to Text

Pull the words out of a PDF as something you can copy, quote and edit. Pages that already contain text are read instantly, and scanned pages are recognised with OCR, all inside your browser.

Add your PDF

PDF only

Drop a PDF here or click to browse

Works on digital PDFs and on scans of paper pages

PDF

Extracted text

Add a PDF to start

The text of your document will appear here

Scanned pages go through recognition, so expect a few seconds per page and check the result for misread words. Digital text is copied verbatim.

How to extract text from a PDF

Add your PDF

Drop in the document. It is opened and rendered locally, nothing is uploaded.

Start the extraction

Pages with a text layer come back instantly. Scanned pages are recognised one by one.

Copy or download the text

Fix anything that was misread, then copy the text or save it as a .txt file.

Why use Aihangsoft PDF to Text

Instant on digital PDFs

If the document already carries real text, it is lifted straight out with no recognition and no guesswork.

Scans never leave your machine

Scanned contracts, invoices and IDs are rendered and read locally, so nothing sensitive is sent anywhere.

Free, no page limit

No sign-up and no cap on the number of pages, whether you bring a one page invoice or a whole report.

Two engines behind one button

Text layer extraction

Most PDFs exported from a word processor, a browser or a design tool carry a real text layer. That text is copied exactly as it was authored, including punctuation and accents.

Use case: reports, contracts, exported invoices

OCR fallback for scans

A page that is really just a photograph gets rendered at double resolution and run through recognition, so a scanned paper document becomes searchable text.

Use case: scanned paperwork, old archives, photographed pages

Per page reporting

The summary tells you how many pages came from a text layer and how many needed recognition, so you know which pages are worth a second look.

Use case: mixed documents, half digital and half scanned

Page markers in the output

Every page is prefixed with a marker so you can trace a quotation back to its page, which matters when the source is a long report.

Use case: research, citations, legal review

Related tools

Image to Text

Read text from a photo

Unlock PDF

Open a locked document

PDF to JPG

Turn pages into images

PDF to text FAQ

Yes, that is the main reason the tool exists. If a page is just a picture of a page, it is rendered and read with OCR. If the PDF already contains real text, that text is lifted straight out, which is both faster and perfectly accurate.
The summary next to the result shows how many pages were read from an existing text layer and how many needed OCR, so you know which part of the output deserves a closer proofread.
No. The file is opened and rendered inside your browser. Neither the document nor the extracted text is ever sent to a server.
Each scanned page has to be rendered to an image and then recognised, which takes a few seconds per page on a normal laptop. A PDF with a real text layer comes back almost instantly because no recognition is needed.
It cannot open a document that asks for a password. Use the Unlock PDF tool first with the password you know, download the unlocked copy, and then read the text from that file.
English is built in, and twelve more languages including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, French and Spanish can be selected. Language data is downloaded once on first use and then cached.

Get the text out of your PDF

Free, private and unlimited. No account needed.

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