How to Extract Text from a PDF (Including Scans)

Extracting text from a PDF sounds simple — until you hit a scanned file that contains no text at all. Understanding the difference saves you a lot of frustration.

Two very different situations

Digital PDFs (created on a computer)

These contain a real text layer. Text extraction works instantly and perfectly — the words are already there.

Scanned PDFs (images of pages)

These contain only pictures of text. There is nothing to extract until OCR (optical character recognition) reads the images.

Extract text from a digital PDF

1. Open PDF to Text.
2. Choose the PDF.
3. Click EXTRACT and download the TXT file.

Text is extracted page by page in reading order, with page breaks preserved.

Extract text from a scanned PDF

1. Open OCR PDF.
2. Choose the scanned PDF.
3. Pick a resolution (200 DPI is a good default).
4. Click RUN OCR — the engine recognizes each page locally in your browser.

OCR accuracy depends on scan quality. Crisp, straight, high-contrast scans work best; handwriting and noisy scans are unreliable.

When you need more than plain text

• Structured data — PDF to JSON extracts text with positions, fonts and sizes for pipelines and analysis.
• Web publishing — PDF to HTML produces a styled HTML page with optional page images.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my extracted text jumbled?

Multi-column layouts extract column by column. Reflow the text in your editor, or use OCR which follows reading order better in some cases.

Can I extract text from a photo of a document?

Convert the photo to PDF first (JPG to PDF), then run OCR on it.

Is extraction private?

Both tools run entirely in your browser — no text is ever uploaded.

Extract your text now with PDF to Text or OCR PDF.