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PDF to Text Online Free — PrivaTools

TL;DR: Upload a PDF and instantly get the extracted text on-screen plus a per-page breakdown — copy anywhere or download as .txt.

Extract text from PDF online for free — pull all readable text content from your PDF into a clean plain-text document. Works with both text-based and searchable PDFs.

PDF to Text is one of 179+ free file utilities on PrivaTools. The entire stack is open source under the MIT license, so the privacy guarantees can be audited end-to-end. You can also run all 179 tools on your own infrastructure with one docker compose command.

How to PDF to Text with PrivaTools

  1. Upload the PDF — Select a text-based or scanned PDF up to 500 MB.
  2. Choose extraction mode — Select plain text extraction for text-based PDFs, or enable OCR for scanned documents. Pick the OCR language if needed.
  3. Download the text — Click Convert. The extracted text is returned as a .txt file with page breaks preserved.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is formatting preserved in the text output?

The tool extracts raw text only. Bold, italic, font sizes, and layout are not preserved — you get clean plain text.

Can I extract text from a specific page range?

Yes. Specify page numbers or ranges to extract text from only the pages you need.

How does it handle multi-column layouts?

The tool reads text in natural reading order. Two-column layouts are generally handled correctly, but complex magazine-style layouts may interleave columns.

Last reviewed 2026-03-15 by the PrivaTools maintainers. Source code on (MIT-licensed, self-hostable).

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