How to Extract Text from a PDF Online — Free, TXT or JSON

A 200-page government PDF holds a single statistic you need to quote. A scanned report has data your spreadsheet wants. Manual copy-paste page by page is a half-hour of clicking; extracting all text at once is two seconds.

When you actually need Extract Text

Quoting from government PDFs, feeding data to a spreadsheet, archiving full-text for search systems, scripting text analysis pipelines, prepping content for translation services.

How to extract text, step by step

Open the tool

Go to convertpdfgo.com/extract-text. No account, no email, no installation.

Drop the PDF in

Drag the file onto the upload area or click to pick. Files up to 30 MB go through without a queue. Encrypted in transit (TLS 1.3), encrypted at rest, deleted within one hour.

Configure your run

Pick txt or json.

Download

The output is a clean PDF — open in any reader.

Common problems and how to avoid them

Text comes out as ?????

The PDF uses a non-standard encoding or embedded subset fonts. Extract still works on most, but unusual scripts may need OCR as a fallback.

Tables come out as one column

Plain text loses spatial layout. Use PDF to Excel for tables that need to stay structured.

Scanned PDF returns empty

It's all images — there's no text layer to extract. OCR the file first, then Extract Text.

A short word on privacy

Three things to know. One: files go over TLS 1.3. Two: files are encrypted at rest while we process them, then deleted automatically within one hour. Three: we don't look at your files or train on them.

How we compare to other free tools

Feature	convertpdfgo	Smallpdf	iLovePDF
Sign-up	None	After 2/day	Optional
Watermark	None	None	None
Auto-delete	1 hour	Vague	2 hours

Frequently asked questions

Will it work on scanned PDFs?

Only if the scan was OCR'd first. Pure image-scans have no extractable text. Run them through OCR before Extract Text.

What's the JSON format?

Per-page array: [{"page": 1, "text": "..."}, ...]. Easy to consume in scripts or data pipelines.

Are my files private?

Files are encrypted in transit (TLS 1.3) and at rest, then auto-deleted within one hour.

Will it work on protected PDFs?

Not directly — unlock the PDF first with our Unlock PDF tool if you know the password.

Is there a usage limit?

No. Free, no daily cap, no sign-up wall, no watermark.

How long does it take?

About 1-3 seconds for most files. Larger or image-heavy PDFs can take up to 30 seconds.

What's the file size limit?

30 MB as a guest, 50 MB when signed in.

What to do next

Now you can PDF to Word, OCR PDF, or Inspect PDF. All free.

Or browse our full list of 49 free PDF tools.