Extract Text
Pull clean text out of a PDF.
Output: Text · Word · Searchable PDF
Free · No sign-up · Files deleted in 1 hour
How to Extract Text
- Upload your PDFDrag it in or import from Drive / OneDrive.
- Pick a formatPlain text, Word document, or a searchable PDF with an invisible text layer.
- DownloadExtract text and save — processed securely and deleted automatically.
Extract Text from PDF Online — Free PDF to Text Converter
Pull clean, selectable text out of any PDF — including scans and image-based pages, where a fast OCR fallback kicks in automatically. Export it as plain text, a Word document, or a searchable PDF with an invisible text layer, whichever your next step needs.
For scanned pages, pick the OCR language — English, French, German, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese — and an OCR resolution from 72 to 300 dpi to balance speed against accuracy on small or blurry text. A Force OCR toggle re-runs recognition even on a digital PDF whose embedded text layer is broken or garbled.
Most free PDF suites treat this as a side effect of their OCR tool rather than a page of its own — Dudle's Extract Text stands alone, covering everything from a quick "PDF to text" conversion to pulling text out of a scanned report. No sign-up is required, and both the upload and the result are deleted automatically after an hour. Extraction happens in the browser and handles PDFs up to 50 MB.
- Works on both digital and scanned PDFs, with automatic OCR fallback
- Export as TXT, DOCX (Word), or a searchable PDF
- OCR in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese
- Adjustable OCR resolution (72–300 dpi) for speed vs. accuracy
- Force OCR to re-run recognition over a broken text layer
- No account required — the PDF and its text go after an hour
Frequently asked questions
How do I extract text from a PDF?
Upload your PDF, choose an output format — plain text, Word, or a searchable PDF — and Dudle extracts every bit of selectable text, free and with no sign-up required.
How do I extract text from a scanned (image-based) PDF?
Upload it the same way as any other PDF — Dudle detects that the page has no text layer and automatically runs OCR to recognise the text before extracting it.
Can I copy text out of a PDF that's actually an image?
Yes — that's exactly what the OCR fallback is for. Image-only pages are recognised with Tesseract OCR first, so you still get selectable, copyable text out the other end.
Is there a free PDF text extractor with built-in OCR?
Yes — Dudle's Extract Text tool is free and includes OCR for scanned or image-based PDFs, so one tool handles both digital text extraction and OCR without a separate step.
What's the difference between TXT, DOCX and Searchable PDF output?
TXT gives you the raw recognised text with no formatting; DOCX wraps that same text in an editable Word document; Searchable PDF keeps the original page images and just adds an invisible, copyable text layer underneath.