PDF to text

Extract readable text from a born-digital PDF in your browser. The selected file is read into WebAssembly memory on this page. It is not uploaded or sent to a server.

PDF file

Choose a PDF to extract its text.

Extracted text

The extractor interprets text positioning, common PDF text operators, WinAnsi fonts, and basic ToUnicode maps. It reconstructs visual lines, inserts likely spaces, removes overlapping duplicate glyphs, and separates pages with form-feed characters.

It does not perform OCR, infer tables, decrypt files, expand compressed object streams, or guarantee the reading order of complex multi-column layouts. Scanned PDFs therefore need an OCR component first. Input is limited to 64 MiB, and output is limited to 32 MiB.

CLI equivalent #

./qip run -i document.pdf -o document.txt -- \
  components/application/pdf/pdf-extract-text.wasm

Download the component #

pdf-extract-text.wasm (62.87 kB)