Digital Drive HQ
PDF Tools

Extract Text from PDF

Pull the text out of a PDF, in your browser.

Free account14-day Pro trialWorks in your browser

Sign in to use this tool

Create a free account to unlock every tool — plus a 14-day free trial of HQ Pro, no card required.

About the Extract Text from PDF

Extract all the text from a PDF free — upload the file and get every page's selectable text, ready to copy into a document, spreadsheet, or script. Much faster than select-copy-pasting page by page, and it happens entirely in your browser so contracts and reports stay private. For scanned, image-only PDFs (no text layer), use our Image to Text OCR tool on exported pages instead.

How to use the Extract Text from PDF

  1. 01Upload a PDF.
  2. 02Click Extract text.
  3. 03Copy the text from every page.

Frequently asked questions

Does it work on scanned PDFs?

It extracts real, selectable text. Scanned/image-only PDFs have no text layer, so those need OCR (coming soon).

Is my file uploaded?

No — text extraction runs entirely in your browser.

Why did I get no text from my PDF?

It's probably a scanned/image-only PDF with no text layer. Convert pages with PDF to JPG, then run them through our Image to Text (OCR) tool.

Related guides

Related tools