PDF Tools

246 free PDF tools — merge, split, compress, convert, edit, secure. No upload limits, no signup.

Every PDF task. In your browser.

246 free tools — merge, split, compress, convert, edit, sign, secure. Files stay on your device. No signup, no upload limits.

100% browser-basedNo upload limitsFree forever⌘K/Ctrl+K to search

Understanding PDF workflows

PDF (Portable Document Format) is a fixed-layout document standard originally developed by Adobe in 1993 and formalised as an ISO standard in 2008 (ISO 32000-1). The current specification is ISO 32000-2:2020. Every reader that claims to display PDFs correctly implements the same underlying document model — a directed graph of objects (pages, fonts, images, content streams) with a cross-reference table letting the reader jump directly to any object by ID. Understanding that model is the difference between fighting your PDF and understanding what any given operation actually does to it.

The PDF utility cluster is organised into four sections. Editing & Assembly covers merging, splitting, extracting pages, removing pages, rotating, adding page numbers, and reordering — all lossless operations that manipulate the page-level structure without re-encoding content. Convert To PDF handles input from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, images, CSV, code files, and other formats, producing PDF/A-compliant output where the format supports it. Convert From PDF extracts content back into editable formats (Word, Excel, text, CSV, images), which is inherently lossy because PDF is fixed-layout — output quality depends heavily on whether the source PDF was born-digital or scanned. Optimize & Secure covers compression, password protection, redaction, watermarking, and metadata cleanup.

Nearly every PDF tool on ScoutMyTool runs entirely in your browser using WebAssembly-compiled PDF libraries. Your files never leave your device, are never uploaded to a server, and are never stored in any log or database. This matters for legal documents (client-confidential exhibits), medical records (HIPAA-protected patient information), and financial statements (account numbers, tax documents). A small number of tools that require heavy server-side processing — OCR for scanned documents, some format conversions — are clearly labelled and use zero-retention processing that deletes source and output within seconds of your download.

For workflows requiring a full multi-function PDF editor rather than a single utility, our PDF Editor tool combines viewing, annotation, text editing, form filling, and signing in one browser-based interface. Use the individual utility tools for single-purpose jobs (merge, split, compress) — they are dramatically faster and simpler than opening a full editor for a one-step operation.

Reviewed by the ScoutMyTool editorial team. All PDF tools built on the ISO 32000-2:2020 standard using open-source libraries with independent audit trails.

Quick start8

The eight tools people use most.

Combine multiple PDF files into a single document — preserving page order. You can also drop a ZIP of PDFs and we merge its contents.

Extract specific pages, split into per-range files, or chunk a PDF into N-page pieces.

Reduce a PDF's file size. Pick a quality preset — High keeps the file visually identical (lossless); Medium and Low re-encode images for much bigger savings.

Convert any PDF (including scanned ones) into an editable Word document. Pick "Preserve formatting" for layout + tables or "Plain text" for the fastest possible cleanup.

Convert a PDF into an Excel spreadsheet — choose .xlsx or legacy .xls. Scanned PDFs are supported.

Combine multiple JPG / PNG images into a single PDF — one image per page, original dimensions preserved.

Render each PDF page as a JPG image — high-resolution, downloaded as a zip of all pages.

Add a signature to a PDF — type your name in a script font, upload a transparent PNG/JPG, or pick from your library. Or use Verify mode to check whether a digitally-signed PDF has been modified since signing.

Organize pages13

Combine, split, rotate, extract, reorder, or delete pages.

Rotate all or specific pages of a PDF by 90°, 180°, or 270°.

Remove Pages from PDF

Delete specific pages from a PDF and download the remaining document.

Extract Pages from PDF

Pull specific pages out of a PDF into a brand-new document — keep ordering, drop the rest.

Extract Pages by Text Search

Search a PDF for a word or phrase and pull only the pages that contain it into a new document.

Split Dual-Page Spread to Single Pages

Book scans often store each 2-page spread as a single wide PDF page. This tool splits each spread down the middle into two output pages.

Interleave Two PDFs (Alternate Pages)

Take two PDFs and weave their pages together — A1, B1, A2, B2, … Common when you scanned a double-sided document as two separate single-sided PDFs.

Bates Numbering

Add Bates-style sequential numbering to a PDF — used in legal e-discovery and document production.

Reorder PDF Pages

Move PDF pages into a new order — list a partial sequence and any unlisted pages stay in their original order at the end.

Batch Merge PDFs

Drop in a stack of PDFs and merge them into groups — by basename prefix or by chunk size — output as one merged PDF per group inside a .zip.

Duplicate one or more pages of a PDF in place — useful for forms, exhibits, or whenever you need extra copies of a page within the same document.

Split by Page Count

Split a PDF into chunks of N pages each — ZIP of split files, useful for emailing or processing in smaller batches.

Split by Bookmarks

Read a PDF's bookmarks (outline) and split into one PDF per bookmark — chapter / section / heading-level segmentation.

Show all 13 organize pages tools (or use search: ⌘K / Ctrl+K)

Remove Duplicate Pages

Edit content15

Add text, watermarks, page numbers, headers, footers, or margins.

Add Watermark to PDF

Stamp custom text on every page — diagonal, horizontal, or footer position. Customise size + opacity. Drop several PDFs to watermark them all at once and download a ZIP.

Add Page Numbers to PDF

Insert page numbers in the footer or header — choose position, format, and starting number.

Page Label Editor (i, ii, iii vs 1, 2, 3)

Set the page labels a PDF viewer displays — e.g. "i, ii, iii" for the first N pages (front matter) and "1, 2, 3" for the body. Metadata change; no visible page content is modified.

Trim margins off every page of a PDF — specify how many points to remove from top, right, bottom, and left.

Auto-trim Whitespace (Crop to Content)

Auto-detect the content bounding box on every page and crop away surrounding whitespace — quick clean-up for scanned documents or oversized exports.

Add Margins to PDF

Add white margin space around every page (e.g. binding edge, annotation room, picture-frame style) — content stays original size, the page grows.

Set Page Background Color

Tint every page of a PDF with a chosen background colour — coloured paper effect, dark-mode proofing, themed prints.

Add Header and Footer to PDF

Add a header text line and/or a footer text line + page number to every page — clean running heads and page numbers in one pass.

Embed File Attachment in PDF

Attach a file (XLSX, DOCX, JSON, image, etc.) inside a PDF — viewers display attachments in their side panel.

Batch Watermark PDFs

Stamp the same watermark across a folder of PDFs — diagonal / horizontal / footer position, with size and opacity controls.

Form Label Association

Apply /TU tooltips to AcroForm fields — the screen-reader label for every form input.

Notary Stamp Overlay

Overlay a printed notary-style stamp on a PDF — bordered seal with state, county, commission name, expiry, and acknowledgement language.

Show all 15 edit content tools (or use search: ⌘K / Ctrl+K)

Compress & optimize2

Make PDFs smaller for email, sharing, or storage.

Compress PDF (Aggressive)

Maximum-compression PDF squeeze — re-rasters every page as a JPEG. Big size reduction, but the text becomes non-selectable.

Batch Compress PDFs

Run lossless compression across multiple PDFs in one go — output as a single .zip.

Convert from PDF10

PDF to Word, Excel, images, presentations, and more.

Pull data out of a PDF as a CSV file — open in Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers. Scanned PDFs are supported.

Convert each page of a PDF to a high-resolution PNG image — single PDF in, ZIP of PNGs out (or one PNG for single-page PDFs).

PDF to Markdown

Extract a PDF's text and turn it into Markdown — heading sizes are detected, line wrapping is normalised.

Extract a PDF's text into a clean, single-file HTML document — paste-ready for a website or email.

PDF to PowerPoint

Convert a PDF into an editable PowerPoint deck — one slide per page, with each page rendered as a high-quality image.

Convert a PDF into an EPUB e-book — readable on Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and any e-reader app.

PDF to HTML Flipbook

Convert a PDF into a self-contained HTML flipbook — page-flip viewer with prev/next + keyboard nav, no external dependencies.

Extract text from a PDF and wrap it in a minimal Rich Text Format (.rtf) file — opens in any word processor.

PDF to Single Long Image

Render every page as a tall stitched PNG — perfect for embedding a multi-page document in a Notion / Confluence / web page where readers want to scroll, not click.

PDF to Text by Page (ZIP)

Extract every page's text into its own .txt file and bundle them in a ZIP — easier to grep, ingest into pipelines, or hand-process page-by-page than a single concatenated file.

Convert to PDF12

Documents, images, spreadsheets, code — turn anything into a PDF.

Convert a Word document to PDF — preserves formatting, fonts, headers, tables, and images.

Convert an Excel spreadsheet (.xlsx or legacy .xls) to PDF — preserves formatting, charts, and print settings.

Paste any plain text and download it as a clean, paginated PDF — preserves line breaks, no formatting needed.

Markdown to PDF

Convert a Markdown document (.md) to PDF — headings, bold/italic, lists, blockquotes, and fenced code all render correctly.

Print source code to PDF with line numbers — paste any code snippet or upload a source file.

Pretty-print a JSON file to PDF — useful for archiving API payloads, config dumps, or audit logs.

Pretty-print an XML file to PDF — handy for archiving SOAP payloads, sitemaps, configs, or RSS feeds.

Convert a CSV spreadsheet to a real table in PDF — auto-sized columns, header styling, multi-page tables.

Convert an HTML file to PDF — keeps headings, paragraphs, lists, blockquotes, and basic bold/italic. Lightweight, no upload.

Combine one or many PNG images into a PDF — alpha-channel transparency is preserved (PDF 1.4 transparency groups).

PowerPoint to PDF

Convert a PowerPoint presentation (.pptx) to PDF — preserves slide layouts, fonts, charts, and embedded images.

Convert an EPUB e-book to PDF — chapters become PDF pages, with chapter titles preserved as headings.

OCR & extract5

Make scanned PDFs searchable. Pull out text, images, or tables.

Extract all text from a PDF as a plain .txt file — great for search-and-replace, archiving, or copy-paste. Or output Markdown with detected headings (#/##/###).

OCR PDF (Make Searchable)

Run OCR on a scanned PDF to add a searchable, copy-able text layer — the file looks identical but you can now select text.

Extract every embedded JPEG image from a PDF as a ZIP — optionally filtered by page range.

OCR Extract Text Only

Extract plain text from a scanned PDF — runs OCR server-side, then pulls the recognised text out as a .txt file (no PDF output).

Run OCR on a scanned PDF — get a searchable PDF, plain text, or Word document. Pick from English / French / Spanish / German. Free, server-side, files deleted after processing.

Forms & signatures11

Fill forms, sign documents, flatten, or detect fields.

Pre-fill a fillable PDF form (AcroForm) — type one line per field as `name=value`. Output is a filled PDF you can sign or print.

Flatten PDF Form

Convert a filled-in PDF form into static, un-editable text — fields become part of the page so the values can't be changed.

Quick Sign (Mobile-friendly)

Sign a PDF using a phone photo of your handwritten signature on a piece of white paper — no need to manually create a transparent PNG first.

Fillable PDF Form Builder

Type a list of field labels, get a blank fillable PDF with named AcroForm text fields you (or someone else) can later fill via PDF Form Fill.

Insurance Claim Form

Generate a printable health-insurance claim form PDF — patient + provider + service + diagnosis + charge sections, in CMS-1500-style layout.

Add Signature Field

Add a labeled signature-line area to an existing PDF — a bordered text field where the recipient drops an image-based signature later.

IRS Form 1099 (Fillable Template)

Generate a printable IRS 1099-style fillable template PDF with payer / recipient / income / tax-withheld sections — for record-keeping (use IRS official forms for filing).

Typed Signature

Type your name and the tool draws it onto the PDF in a cursive-style font — quick alternative to image-based signing.

Bulk-fill Form from CSV

Take a fillable PDF template + a CSV (one row per output) — fill the template for each row and download a ZIP of all filled PDFs.

Detect Signature Zones

Locate every signature field in a PDF — name, page, position, signed/unsigned status — for routing to e-sign workflows.

Flatten PDF Transparency

Rasterise each page at print resolution and rebuild the PDF as image-only pages — eliminates transparency, gradients, and live text issues that older RIPs may misinterpret.

Security & privacy16

Password-protect, unlock, redact text, or strip metadata.

Protect PDF (Add Password)

Add a password to a PDF so only people with the password can open it — strong AES-256 encryption.

Unlock PDF (Remove Password)

Remove a password from a PDF — you'll need to know the current password.

Find text and cover it with black rectangles — visual redaction. For full text-stream removal, use a paid pro tool.

Redact PDF (true content-stream removal)

Court-grade redaction: matched pages are rasterised, then black bars are drawn over the matches — the original text under the rectangles is permanently gone from the file, not just hidden. Pages with no matches stay as vector.

PDF/A Converter

Convert a PDF to the PDF/A archival format (best-effort PDF/A-1b / 2b / 3b) by embedding the required metadata and conformance markers.

PDF/UA Converter

Apply PDF/UA accessibility flags — document language, tagged-marked flag, and PDF/UA XMP metadata — for a best-effort accessibility pass.

Permanent Redaction

Genuinely remove sensitive content by rasterising the affected pages and burning black rectangles into the bitmap — the underlying text is gone, not just hidden.

Confidentiality Stamp

Stamp a configurable confidentiality marker (header band + footer band, with optional date and recipient) onto every page of a PDF.

HIPAA PHI Detector

Scan a PDF for likely PHI (protected health information) — SSNs, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, and MRN-shaped strings — with page numbers and remediation suggestions.

PDF/X-1a Converter

Apply best-effort PDF/X-1a metadata — embed XMP conformance, set OutputIntent placeholder, and update producer string for print-pre-flight readiness.

PDF Cleaner (Strip Comments, Forms, Scripts)

One-shot cleanup: strip every annotation, form field, and JavaScript script from a PDF. Hand off a clean copy for publishing, archiving, or sharing externally.

PDF to PDF/A-1a

Apply best-effort PDF/A-1a metadata — the strictest accessibility-aware archival profile, requiring tagged structure (best-effort claim).

Show all 16 security & privacy tools (or use search: ⌘K / Ctrl+K)

Inspect & repair9

Look inside a PDF — page count, metadata, fonts, embedded files. Repair corrupt files.

PDF Page Count & Info

Quickly see a PDF's page count, file size, and first-page dimensions — no download needed.

PDF Metadata Editor

View and edit a PDF's embedded metadata — title, author, subject, keywords, creator software. Drop several PDFs to bulk-apply the same metadata and download a ZIP.

Repair Corrupted PDF

Salvage a damaged PDF using qpdf — fixes broken cross-reference tables, recovers what's recoverable, often opens unopenable files.

Validate PDF/A Compliance

Heuristic PDF/A-readiness audit — checks structural elements (XMP claim, MarkInfo, OutputIntent, tagged structure) and lists what would block strict validation.

List All Hyperlinks

Walk a PDF's /Annot Link entries and list every hyperlink found — page, target URL, position. Info-only export for review or migration.

Validate Required Form Fields

Check whether every required field in a PDF form has been filled. Pass/fail report with the names of any missing fields.

PDF/A Version Detector

Read a PDF's metadata to identify which PDF/A part and conformance level it claims (1a, 1b, 2a/2b/2u, 3a/3b/3u) — and whether it claims any at all.

Bulk Page-Count Audit

Drop N PDFs — get a CSV with page count, file size, and metadata for each one. Useful for inventories, bid packages, evidence collations, or anywhere you need a one-row-per-document summary.

Bulk List PDF Metadata

Drop N PDFs — get a CSV with every metadata field for each one (Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator, Producer, dates). Audit before sharing externally to catch leaks.

Everything else145

Specialized PDF tools that don't fit the buckets above.

Resize PDF Pages

Change every page of a PDF to a standard size (A4, Letter, Legal, A3) — content is scaled to fit, preserving aspect ratio.

Organise PDF Pages

Reorder and delete pages of a PDF in one step — type the page sequence you want, separated by commas.

Add PDF Bookmarks

Add a navigable bookmark sidebar to a PDF — paste a list of "page,title" lines and we wire up the rest.

Extract PDF Bookmarks

Read the bookmark list from a PDF as plain text or JSON — one line per bookmark, with the page it points to.

Generate Table of Contents

Auto-generate bookmarks from headings detected in a PDF — based on font size. Larger text = chapter, smaller = section.

Compare Two PDFs

Find what changed between two PDFs — text-level diff, page by page, output as a side-readable report.

Insert Blank Page

Insert one or more blank pages into a PDF at any position — A4, Letter, Legal, or matching the existing page size.

Add Image to PDF

Insert a PNG or JPG image into an existing PDF at any page and position — for stamps, signatures, logos, or photos.

Edit Text (Overlay)

Add or "edit" text on an existing PDF by drawing new text on top of the page — ideal for filling in fields, adding notes, or correcting small details.

Auto-Bookmark from Headings

Automatically generate bookmarks from a PDF's heading-style text — detected by font size — without you having to type a thing.

Section 508 / WCAG Check

Heuristic accessibility audit — checks document language, title metadata, tagged-structure flags, bookmarks, form-field labels, and more.

Bundle multiple PDFs into a single .zip — no PDF processing, just packaging for easy email or upload.

Show all 145 everything else tools (or use search: ⌘K / Ctrl+K)