PDF to Text
Extract readable text from a PDF. Accepts PDF up to 20 MB. Produces TXT or Markdown. Processing runs on demand with Cloudflare Workers AI without FileClear AI file storage.
Input: PDF up to 20 MB · Output: TXT or Markdown
Quality boundary
Text-layer PDFs preserve words more reliably than visual layout. Scanned PDFs need OCR before meaningful text can be extracted.
How this file is processed
Cloudflare processes the request on demand; FileClear AI does not save the uploaded bytes or generated result in R2. Review the result before consequential use.
Learn when PDF text extraction needs OCR
Useful next actions
Extract PDF text into a clean TXT or Markdown file.
PDF-to-text conversion works best when the document already contains selectable text. Scanned or photographed pages need OCR first because their visible words are stored as pixels rather than characters.
Check whether the PDF has a text layer
Try selecting and copying a short sentence in a PDF viewer. If selection works, direct extraction can usually preserve the words without OCR. If the whole page selects like one image, use OCR PDF first, then compare names, numbers, and uncertain characters with the scan.
Choose TXT or Markdown for the next step
TXT is the simplest option for search, copying, and plain-language processing. Markdown adds page headings that help preserve page boundaries during review. Multi-column layouts, tables, headers, and footers can still produce an imperfect reading order, so check a page from each layout style before reuse.
Quick quality check
- Confirm selectable source text
- Use OCR for scanned pages
- Choose TXT or Markdown
- Check column reading order
- Verify names and numbers