Extract Text from PDF — Free Online, In-Browser
You need the text inside a PDF — to paste into a doc, feed to an LLM, quote in an email, or convert to Markdown for a static site. Most online tools want you to upload the file and sign up. You don't have to.
Quick answer
Open the PDF tool, drop your file, pick Text, Markdown, or Images, download. Runs in your browser, nothing uploaded.
Step-by-step
- Go to getconvertify.me/pdf.
- Drop the PDF.
- Choose output:
- Text — plain
.txt, one line per line. - Markdown — preserves headings, lists, bold/italic where the PDF has structure.
- Images — one PNG per page.
- Text — plain
- Download.
What each mode is good for
| Mode | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Text | Pasting into Notion/Docs, feeding an LLM, search/indexing |
| Markdown | Republishing on a blog/static site, archiving with structure |
| Images | OCR pipelines, sharing a single page as a picture, annotating |
Scanned PDFs — heads up
If the PDF is scanned (a photo of text, not selectable text), extraction returns empty or garbled output. That's not a tool bug — there's no text layer to extract. You need OCR first. Convertify doesn't OCR yet; for now use a separate OCR step, then come back to extract Markdown.
Quick check: open the PDF in any reader and try to select text with your cursor. If it highlights, extraction works. If your cursor draws a rectangle instead, it's scanned.
Private — runs in your browser
Whole pipeline runs locally via WebAssembly. Sensitive PDFs (contracts, medical, internal docs) never leave your device. No account, no watermark.
Related
- PDF to Markdown converter — deeper guide
- PDF to text converter — text-only walkthrough
- PDF to JPG — one image per page
- Compress PDF — shrink the source PDF first if huge
Common questions
Will formatting survive? Markdown mode preserves headings/lists where the PDF has them tagged. Plain Text drops formatting entirely.
Image resolution? PNGs are rendered at a reasonable on-screen resolution (~150 DPI). For print-quality, render each page in your PDF viewer.
Max PDF size? A few hundred MB on desktop; browser memory is the cap.
Phone? Works. Downloads save via share sheet.