Free PDF tools
Last reviewed: September 23, 2026 · Markdown version
Small tools that answer one question each. They run entirely in your browser — no upload, no sign-in, no account. Whatever file you choose stays on your machine, which is the same rule the app follows. Two of the three store nothing at all; the multi-PDF search can remember a pointer to one folder you picked, in Chrome and Edge, and only if you tick the box asking it to.
Search across many PDFs at once
Ctrl-F searches one open file at a time. Choose a folder and this searches every PDF in it together, giving back the file, the page, and the sentence around every match — and naming any file it could not read, rather than folding it quietly into a zero-result search. Scanned pages can be read too, with optional in-browser OCR. In Chrome and Edge it can remember the folder, so the next visit searches it again without you finding it first.
Extract the text from a PDF
The words out of a PDF as plain text, page by page, ready to copy or save. Useful when you want the content rather than the document — and a clear look at the raw material every PDF search works from.
Is your PDF searchable?
Some PDFs are text and some are photographs of text. They look identical on screen, and only one of them can be searched. Choose a file and this tells you which kind you have — and, if it is a scan, what to do about it.
Only one of these runs OCR, and only when you ask. They read the text a PDF already stores; a scanned page — a photograph of words — has nothing in it to read, and every tool here says so plainly instead of returning an empty answer. The search tool can also read scanned pages with OCR if you tick its box — English printed text, in your browser, and it can misread. Making a scan searchable for good is what OCR is for, and what the app does on your device, once, for a whole library.
More answers
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