---
title: "PDF to Text Converter — Extract Text Free | Compress Pro"
description: "Extract all text from a PDF into a .txt file right in your browser — digital documents only, scans need OCR. No uploads, no length limits. Free."
canonical: https://compress-pro.com/pdf-to-text
---

# Convert PDF to text.

> The words out of any digital PDF — extracted on-device.

Pull all text out of a PDF into a plain .txt file — **extracted from the digital text layer, entirely in your browser**. Reports, e-books, contracts and exports become raw text for editing, searching, quoting or feeding to other tools.

**No uploads · No ads · Free & open source.**

## How it works

1. Drop files anywhere on the page, click to browse, or paste with Ctrl/⌘ + V.
2. Pick a quality or preset — or set an exact target size and let the tool find it.
3. Compress, compare before/after, and download — individually or as a ZIP.

## Digital PDFs only — scans need OCR

This tool reads the text layer a digital PDF already carries. Scanned documents are photographs of paper — they have no text layer, and the honest result here is a clear error, not silent emptiness. For scans, [OCR PDF](https://compress-pro.com/ocr-pdf) recognizes the text on your device and can make the PDF itself searchable; its sibling [Image to Text](https://compress-pro.com/image-to-text) does the same for photos and screenshots.

## Frequently asked questions

### Why did I get an error about a missing text layer?

Your PDF is a scan — pictures of pages, with no digital text inside. Run it through the OCR PDF tool instead; that recognizes the text locally.

### Is the layout preserved?

No — the output is plain text, page by page. Columns, tables and formatting flatten into reading order, which suits quoting and processing, not reprinting.

### How large can the PDF be?

Hundreds of pages are fine — extraction is fast and runs entirely on your device, so there is no upload cap and no queue.

### Is it private?

Yes. The document never leaves your browser — nothing is uploaded, and the server only delivers this page. That makes it safe for contracts, invoices, medical records — anything you would not email to a stranger. Want proof? Run one file through, switch your connection off, and run another — it still works.

## Related tools

- [Make scanned PDFs searchable](https://compress-pro.com/ocr-pdf)
- [Convert PDF to JPG](https://compress-pro.com/pdf-to-jpg)
- [Convert EPUB to TXT](https://compress-pro.com/epub-to-txt)
- [Compress PDFs](https://compress-pro.com/compress-pdf)

---

Part of [Compress Pro](https://compress-pro.com/) — every tool page has a markdown twin at `<page url>.md`. Full tool index: [llms.txt](https://compress-pro.com/llms.txt)