PDF to TXT, Extract Plain Text From a PDF Online
Drop a PDF and pull out every page of its text as clean, editable plain text, then copy it or save a.txt file in one click. It reads the PDF's embedded text layer right in your browser, so nothing is ever uploaded. Scanned or image-only PDFs have no text to extract until they're run through OCR.
What is the pdf to txt?
PDF to TXT extracts all the text from a PDF into clean, editable plain text, in reading order, so you can copy it or download a .txt file. It reads every page's text layer directly in your browser, with nothing uploaded. Scanned or image-only PDFs need OCR first. Free to use.
The GigAI PDF to TXT extractor lifts the words out of a PDF and hands you clean, editable UTF-8 plain text. No formatting, no markup, just the content ready to reuse. Drop or paste a PDF and the tool walks every page's embedded text layer with pdf.js, concatenates it page by page, and shows the full result in a live pane you can read, select and copy immediately. Download it as a.txt file, copy the whole thing to your clipboard, or grab live word, character, line and page counts to check the extraction at a glance. It's built for the everyday jobs where you need the text and not the layout: pulling a quote out of a contract, feeding a report into a language model or a search index, salvaging body copy from a locked-down brochure, or turning a PDF ebook chapter into something you can edit in any plain-text editor. Because everything runs on your device with a PDF engine loaded on demand, confidential contracts, financial statements and unreleased documents never leave your machine, close the tab and every trace is gone. One honest, important boundary: this extracts a PDF's *existing* text layer. A PDF that is really a scan or a set of page images has no text layer to read, so it will come back empty, those need Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to turn the pixels into characters first, and the sibling OCR PDF tool does exactly that. Extraction also recovers reading order and words, not the original columns, tables, headers, footers or fonts. When you need the styling back, pdf-to-word or pdf-to-html rebuild rough structure instead of stripping it away.
- Difficulty:
- Easy
- Typical time:
- ~15s
- Processing:
- 100% browser processing
- Converts:
- PDF → TXT
Last updated
How to use the pdf to txt
- 1
Add your PDF
Drop a PDF onto the drop zone, click to browse, or paste one from your clipboard. If it's password-protected, enter the open password when prompted.
- 2
Let it extract the text
The tool reads every page's text layer in your browser and shows the full plain-text result in the preview pane, along with word, character, line and page counts.
- 3
Copy or download
Copy the whole text to your clipboard, or download a .txt file named after your PDF. Reset in one click to extract text from another document.
What PDF to TXT includes
Every page's text, in order
pdf.js walks each page's embedded text layer and concatenates it into one clean plain-text document, page by page in reading order. No markup, no styling, just the words.
Live preview you can read & select
The full extracted text appears in a scrollable pane the moment the PDF loads, so you can read it, select passages and confirm the extraction before you copy or download anything.
Copy or download .txt
Copy the entire text to your clipboard with one click, or download a UTF-8.txt file named after your PDF, ready to paste into an editor, a search index or a language-model prompt.
Live word, character & page counts
See exactly how much text came out (words, characters, lines and page count) so you can spot an empty scan or a partial extraction at a glance.
Handles password-protected PDFs
If a PDF is encrypted, enter its open password and the tool decrypts it locally to read the text: the password and the file never leave your browser.
100% client-side
Parsing and extraction happen entirely in your browser with a PDF engine loaded on demand. Contracts, statements and private documents are never uploaded, stored or logged.
Why use our pdf to txt
Get the words, skip the layout
When you only need the content (a quote, a clause, a chapter) this strips away columns, fonts and page furniture and gives you clean text you can immediately edit and reuse.
Feed PDFs into anything text
Plain text is the universal input: paste extracted PDF text into a language model, a search index, a translator or a spreadsheet without wrestling with PDF-specific tooling.
Private by default
Because extraction is local, confidential PDFs never touch a server. No upload, no account, no retention. Ideal for legal, financial and internal documents.
Honest about scans
It tells you plainly when a PDF has no text layer to read and points you at OCR, instead of silently returning gibberish or an empty file.
Built for the way you work
From quick one-off fixes to daily workflows, see how people put this tool to use.
- Legal & compliance
Pull clauses out of contracts
Extract the text of an agreement to quote a clause, run a keyword search, or paste sections into a review tool: without retyping and without uploading the contract anywhere.
- Data / AI engineer
Feed PDFs into models & indexes
Turn a report or datasheet into clean plain text to embed, index, or drop into a language-model prompt, skipping the noise that PDF-specific parsers add.
- Student / Researcher
Get quotable text from papers
Extract the body text of a journal article or ebook chapter into a plain-text file you can annotate, quote and cite in any editor.
- Writer / Editor
Salvage copy from a PDF
Recover the words from a brochure, whitepaper or press release that only exists as a PDF, so you can edit and repurpose the copy without rebuilding it by hand.
Supported formats
Accepts PDF, and produces TXT and Plain text, all processed locally in your browser.
- TXT
- Plain text
Frequently asked questions
Recommended tools
PDF to Word
Turn a PDF into an editable Microsoft Word (.docx) document, text extracted into clean, editable paragraphs, entirely in your browser with no upload.
OCR PDF
Turn a scanned PDF into searchable, selectable text with in-browser OCR. Get a searchable PDF plus the extracted text: free, private, no uploads.
Unlock PDF
Remove the open password from a PDF you own, enter the password, and download a decrypted copy you can read, edit and print. Free and 100% in your browser.
PDF to Excel
Extract tables from a PDF into an editable spreadsheet, fix any cells, then download a real Excel.xlsx (or CSV). Best-effort, position-based table detection. Works best on clean tabular PDFs. Nothing is uploaded.
PDF to HTML
Turn a PDF into clean, semantic HTML you can paste into a page, a CMS or an email. pdf.js reads each page's text and rebuilds reading-order paragraphs in per-page sections, 100% in your browser, nothing uploaded. Honest about layout: it recovers text structure, not pixel-perfect design.
PDF to JPG
Turn every page of a PDF into a JPG or PNG image, right in your browser. Pick a quality, preview the pages, and download them all as a ZIP.
Common problems, solved
Hit a snag? Here are quick fixes for the issues people run into most.
My PDF came back empty or with almost no text.
That PDF is almost certainly a scan or made of page images, which have no text layer to read. Run it through the OCR PDF tool first to recognise the characters, then extract the text here.
The line breaks and spacing look odd.
Extraction preserves the words and reading order but not the original layout, so wrapped lines, columns, tables and headers can produce uneven breaks. Clean the text up in any editor, or use pdf-to-word / pdf-to-html if you need rough structure restored instead of stripped.
It asks for a password.
The PDF is encrypted. Enter its open (user) password and extraction runs locally: nothing is sent anywhere. If you don't have the password, unlock it first with the Unlock PDF tool.
Some characters or ligatures look wrong.
A few PDFs embed fonts with non-standard character maps, so exotic glyphs, ligatures or symbols can extract imperfectly. The bulk of the body text is reliable. Spot-fix the odd character in your editor.
Get the most out of it
Only need a passage? Extract everything, then select and copy just the lines you want from the preview pane.
Check the page count against your PDF, if it's lower than expected, a page may be an image that needs OCR.
For a scanned PDF, run OCR PDF first, then bring the searchable result back here for clean text.
Extracted text is UTF-8, so accented and non-Latin characters copy across into editors and prompts intact.
Need the formatting back instead of stripped away? Try pdf-to-word or pdf-to-html rather than this text-only extractor.
What's new
Recent updates and improvements to the pdf to txt.
Initial release, drop/paste a PDF and extract every page's text layer to clean UTF-8 plain text, with a live preview, copy-to-clipboard,.txt download and live word/character/line/page counts.
Added support for password-protected PDFs (decrypted locally) and a clearer empty-result notice that points scanned or image-only PDFs to the OCR PDF tool.
Improved page-boundary handling for cleaner separation between pages and added the live page count to help spot image-only pages that need OCR.
Keep exploring
Related tools
Problems we solve
Definitions
From the blog
Explore categories
Compare formats
Common tasks
Your privacy is built in
Your PDF is parsed and its text extracted entirely in your browser using a PDF engine loaded on demand: the file is never uploaded to any server. Nothing is stored, logged or transmitted, so you can safely extract text from contracts, financial statements and confidential documents. Password-protected PDFs are decrypted locally. The password never leaves your device. Close the tab and every trace is gone.
- Runs in your browser
- No uploads
- Nothing stored
Ready to try the pdf to txt?
Free, private and instant. PDF to TXT runs right in your browser.