# PDF Text & Table Extractor — Markdown, OCR (`acotr_moonie/pdf-text-extractor`) Actor Text, markdown, ruled tables and RAG chunks from PDF URLs, one item per page or per document, with optional Tesseract OCR for scanned pages. Built on PDFium: 140 pages in about a second. Charged per page delivered; document summaries, errors and skipped pages are free. - **URL**: https://apify.com/acotr\_moonie/pdf-text-extractor.md - **Developed by:** [moonie](https://apify.com/acotr_moonie) (community) - **Categories:** Developer tools, AI, Automation - **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks - **User rating**: No ratings yet ## Pricing from $0.30 / 1,000 pages This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events. Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event ## What's an Apify Actor? Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows. In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours, and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store. In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server. Actors are written with capital "A". ## How to integrate an Actor? If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects. You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready. The best way to integrate Actors is as follows. - **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use). - **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`. - **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`. - **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`. - **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md). For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below. For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt). # README ## PDF Text & Table Extractor — Markdown, OCR > **Unofficial tool.** Not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Google (PDFium) or the > maintainers of Tesseract. Built with PDFium (BSD-3) and Tesseract (Apache-2.0); all trademarks > belong to their owners. **Removal requests:** > [TAKEDOWN.md](https://github.com/moonie0201/apify-utils/blob/main/TAKEDOWN.md) — honoured in > 48 hours. **Privacy:** [PRIVACY.md](https://github.com/moonie0201/apify-utils/blob/main/PRIVACY.md). Paste PDF URLs, get text back — as one row per page, one row per document, or as RAG chunks with page and character offsets. PDFium does the reading: a 142-page US tax publication came back in 1.2 s in our measurements. Optional heuristic markdown, ruled-table extraction and Tesseract OCR for scanned pages ride along in the same Actor. You pay **per page delivered**; the document summary row, error rows, duplicates and pages you skipped cost nothing. ### What it extracts | Content | Delivered? | Notes | |---|---|---| | Text layer | Yes | PDFium text extraction, `\n` line breaks, Unicode NFC | | Markdown | Yes | Headings from font-size rank, paragraphs from line gaps — a heuristic, not a layout model | | Ruled tables | Yes | Tables drawn with ruling lines, as arrays of rows and as GitHub tables in the markdown | | Borderless tables | No | Borderless tables stay as text | | OCR (English) | Opt-in | Tesseract on image-only pages, charged as `ocr-page` | | Images | No | Not exported | | Form fields | No | Field values are not read | | LLM post-processing | No | Deterministic: identical bytes and input give identical charged rows | ### How to use 1. **Paste direct PDF links** into `urls`, one per line — the file itself, not a viewer page. 2. **Pick an output mode.** `page` for spreadsheets and Google Sheets, `document` for one item per file, `chunk` for a vector store. Turn on `extractTables` or `ocr` if you need them. 3. **Run it.** Set `maxPages` (default 5,000) or the run's maximum charge to bound the spend. The input form shows every option with its default; the prefill runs the six-page IRS Form W-9. ### Output modes **Page** (`recordType: "page"`, charged) — one row per page. The example is page 1 of the IRS Form W-9 (`https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf`, a US-government public-domain work, 6 pages, 141 KB) exactly as the prefill run produced it; only `text` and `markdown` are cut short: ```json { "recordType": "page", "url": "https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf", "documentId": "2d420cbb4123dcf1", "page": 1, "pageCount": 6, "text": "Form W-9\n(Rev. March 2024)\nRequest for Taxpayer \nIdentification Number and Certification\nDepartment of the Treasury \nInternal Revenue Service ...", "markdown": "# Form W-9\n\n(Rev. March 2024)\n\n## Request for Taxpayer\n\n## Identification Number and Certification\n\nDepartment of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service ...", "tables": null, "tableCount": 0, "charCount": 5704, "wordCount": 933, "width": 611.98, "height": 791.97, "rotation": 0, "hasTextLayer": true, "ocrApplied": false, "needsOcr": false } ``` **Document** (`recordType: "document"`) — one row per URL. It is always written, free, as the last row for that document, and carries `status`, `errorCode`, `documentId`, `fileName`, HTTP status, byte size, page counts, PDF metadata, `encrypted`, `permissionsCopyAllowed`, `durationMs` and `fetchedAt`. In `outputMode: document` the same row also carries `text`, `markdown`, `pages[{page, text, charCount, ocrApplied}]`, `tables`, `charCount` and `wordCount`, and is charged by page count after it has been pushed. A viewer page instead of a PDF comes back like this: ```json { "recordType": "document", "url": "https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=...", "status": "error", "errorCode": "not_pdf", "httpStatus": 200, "contentType": "text/html; charset=utf-8", "bytes": 0, "pageCount": null, "pagesExtracted": 0, "pagesCharged": 0 } ``` **Chunk** (`recordType: "chunk"`) — `chunkSize` characters (default 1,500 ≈ 375 tokens), split at paragraph, then sentence, then hard cut, with `chunkOverlap` repeated from the previous tail. Each row has `chunkIndex`, `chunkCount`, `pageStart`, `pageEnd`, `charStart`, `charEnd`, `tokenEstimate` and `headingPath` (the nearest markdown headings above the chunk). Chunks are charged per **page covered**, so the chunk size never changes the bill. Error codes on document rows: `blocked_url`, `download_failed`, `too_large`, `not_pdf`, `password_required`, `permissions_restricted`, `malformed`, `timeout`, `pages_capped`, `budget_exhausted`, `run_timeout`, `item_too_large`, `duplicate`. Two dataset views are provided: **Pages** and **Documents**. ### Coming from memo23, automation-lab or gochujang | Their input | Here | |---|---| | `urls` | `urls` (same) | | `pageRange` (memo23) | `pageRange` (same syntax: `1-5, 8, 12-`) | | `startPage` / `endPage` | `pageRange` | | `ocrScannedPages` / `enableOcr` | `ocr` | | `maxPdfSizeMb` / `maxPdfMb` | `maxPdfMb` (same) | **What you gain:** per-page billing instead of per-file, ruled tables, RAG chunks with offsets, a `documentId` for deduplication, typed error codes on free rows, and `hasTextLayer` / `needsOcr` flags so you know before paying for OCR. **What you lose, stated plainly:** no file upload or base64 input (URLs only), no proxy retry on a refused download, English OCR only, and flat-price Actors are cheaper for long text documents — see Pricing. ### Pricing **$0.0003 per page, $0.003 per OCR page, no start fee.** Free, always: document summary rows, error rows, duplicate rows, pages outside `pageRange`, pages beyond `maxPagesPerPdf` or `maxPages`, image-only pages that were not OCRed (`ocr` off, `maxOcrPagesPerPdf` reached or Tesseract failed — delivered empty with `needsOcr: true`), and documents never reached because the run stopped on budget or before its timeout. Worked examples, plain arithmetic: | Job | Pages | Cost | |---|---|---| | 2-page invoice | 2 × $0.0003 | **$0.0006** | | 10-page paper | 10 × $0.0003 | **$0.003** | | 100-page manual | 100 × $0.0003 | **$0.03** | | 300-page manual (`maxPagesPerPdf: 300`) | 300 × $0.0003 | **$0.09** | | 20 scanned pages with OCR | 20 × $0.003 | **$0.06** | Comparable Actors on the Store, public prices only, as of 2026-08-28: | Actor | Model | 2 pp | 10 pp | 100 pp | 20 pp OCR | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | this Actor | $0.0003/page, $0.003/OCR page, no start fee | $0.0006 | $0.003 | $0.03 | $0.06 | | memo23 `pdf-text-extractor` | $0.005 start + $0.005/PDF + $0.015/OCR page | $0.01 | $0.01 | $0.01 | $0.31 | | gochujang `pdf-text-extractor` | $0.001 start + $0.02/PDF + $0.0005/page | $0.022 | $0.026 | $0.071 | $0.031 (no OCR event) | | automation-lab `pdf-text-extractor` | price not public | — | — | — | — | Per-page pricing wins on short documents, on runs where many downloads fail or are skipped, and on OCR. For text documents longer than about 17 pages memo23's flat price is lower. Set `maxPagesPerPdf` (default 100) and `maxPages` to keep long documents within the budget you intend; when the run's maximum charge is reached the Actor stops pushing, writes free `budget_exhausted` rows for what it did not reach, and still finishes successfully. ### Security and limits - Private and internal URLs are refused before any request (`blocked_url`): only http/https on ports 80, 443, 8080 and 8443, no localhost, no `.internal` / `.local`, no private, loopback, link-local, multicast or reserved addresses. The resolved address is pinned for the request, so DNS cannot be swapped between the check and the download; redirects are re-checked on every hop, at most five, never from https to http. Hostnames listed in the Actor's `blocklist.txt` (removal requests, see TAKEDOWN.md) are refused the same way, before any request. - Files over `maxPdfMb` (default 50 MB, maximum 100 MB) are refused on Content-Length and aborted during download. The effective cap is also bounded by the run's memory (memory / 4). Each download hop has a 70-second wall (10 s connect + 60 s body); a server that stalls or trickles bytes gets a free `timeout` row instead of holding the run. - Each document is parsed in its own memory-capped subprocess with a wall-clock limit (120 s, 600 s with OCR), so a hostile or broken file becomes one free `malformed` or `timeout` row and the run continues. - One plain GET per URL, one download in flight per host and at least one second between requests to the same host, no retry on 401, 403 or 429, no proxy, no cookies (a `Set-Cookie` is dropped, never replayed), no connection reuse between hosts, no login. - No DRM or paywall bypass. Owner-restricted (no-copy) PDFs are skipped with `permissions_restricted`; there is no override. User-password-protected files need `pdfPassword`. - 100 URLs per run, 100 pages per PDF by default (up to 2,000), 2 documents in flight. ### Privacy The output contains whatever your documents contain. If a document holds personal data, you are the controller of the resulting dataset. The Actor opens no outbound connection to the developer and embeds no developer credential, so the Actor T\&C creator-access clause is not exercised; your URL list is visible to us only through Apify's Console if you open an issue about a run. The file exists only inside the run container (memory or its ephemeral disk) and is gone when the run ends; the dataset lives in your Apify account under Apify's retention — delete the run to erase it. We do not log URLs or document text. ### For AI agents and MCP Use `outputMode: "document"` for one call → one item with the full text, or `"chunk"` to feed a vector store directly. `maxPages` and the run's maximum charge are honoured **before** extraction, so an agent never pays for pages it cannot receive, and with `ocr` off there is a single price to reason about. Errors are typed rows, not exceptions. ```json { "urls": ["https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf"], "outputMode": "document", "maxPages": 50 } ``` ### Limitations you should know before you buy - Ruled tables only; borderless tables stay as text. Table detection adds about 0.3–0.5 s per page. - Multi-column reading order follows the PDF's content stream. PDFium kept column order on a two-column paper in our tests, but there is no guarantee. - Headings are a font-size heuristic; a document with a single font size gets no headings. - OCR measured 93–97 % similarity on clean 150–200 dpi scans of printed English; worse on handwriting, skew or low resolution. English only. - Encrypted files need `pdfPassword`; owner-restricted files are always skipped. - No file upload; URLs only. 100 URLs per run; 100 pages per PDF by default (up to 2,000); one request per host per second. - The run-timeout guard stops before the platform timeout and writes free `run_timeout` rows, so a run never ends as TIMED-OUT. At defaults that is roughly 100 text PDFs or 20 OCR PDFs per run. - A document-mode row over 8 MB drops `markdown` and `pages[].text` (`errorCode: item_too_large`); `text` is kept, so the page charge stands. If `text` alone still exceeds the platform's 9 MB item limit, the row is delivered as a free `item_too_large` error row without content and nothing is charged — use `page` or `chunk` mode for such documents. - Image size: 628 MB as measured on the first build (PDFium, pdfplumber, Tesseract and the English language pack). ### FAQ **Is this legal?** The Actor sends one plain GET per URL you supply, with an identifying User-Agent, no login, no proxy and no retry on a refusal. The text belongs to the document's copyright owner: you must have the right to download and process each file, and you must follow the hosting site's terms and robots rules. Owner-restricted PDFs are skipped. Rights-holders who want a file excluded from future runs are pointed at the hosting site or the user who supplied the URL — see [TAKEDOWN.md](https://github.com/moonie0201/apify-utils/blob/main/TAKEDOWN.md). **A scanned PDF returns empty text?** Turn on `ocr`. Image-only pages are delivered empty and free with `needsOcr: true` while it is off. **How do I know what I will pay before paying for OCR?** Run once with `ocr` off: every page row carries `hasTextLayer` and `needsOcr`, and the document row counts `imageOnlyPages`. **Google Drive link?** Use the direct-download form of the link. A viewer page is HTML and comes back as a free `not_pdf` row. **How do I dedupe?** `documentId` is a hash of the file bytes: the same file behind two URLs gets one set of charged rows and a free `duplicate` row. **What is `pageRange` syntax?** `1-5, 8, 12-` — 1-based, `12-` means 12 to the end. Pages outside the range are never charged. ### Support Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab or in the public repository at . Every issue gets a reply within 14 days, usually within 48 hours. Bug reports that include the run id and the input are fixed fastest. Removal, takedown, copyright or privacy requests jump the queue: **mooniegilog@gmail.com** · [TAKEDOWN.md](https://github.com/moonie0201/apify-utils/blob/main/TAKEDOWN.md) · [PRIVACY.md](https://github.com/moonie0201/apify-utils/blob/main/PRIVACY.md). ### Disclaimer You are responsible for having the right to download and process each file and for the hosting site's terms and robots rules. The Actor sends one plain GET per URL with an identifying User-Agent, no login, no proxy and no retry on a refusal; it bypasses no DRM, paywall or owner restriction. This tool is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Google (PDFium), the Tesseract maintainers or any site whose files you process. All trademarks belong to their respective owners. # Actor input Schema ## `urls` (type: `array`): Direct links to PDF files (http or https), one per line. Must be the PDF itself, not a viewer page such as Google Docs or a browser preview. Each URL is fetched once with a plain GET, no proxy, no login; requests to the same host are spaced at least one second apart. You are responsible for the hosting site's terms and robots rules. ## `outputMode` (type: `string`): page = one item per page (CSV and Google Sheets friendly). document = one item per PDF with full text, markdown and a pages array. chunk = RAG chunks of chunkSize characters with page and character offsets. A free document summary row is always written. ## `includeMarkdown` (type: `boolean`): Add a markdown field: headings inferred from font-size rank, paragraphs from line gaps, tables as GitHub tables when extractTables is on. Heuristic, not a layout model. ## `extractTables` (type: `boolean`): Detect tables drawn with ruling lines and return them as arrays of rows. Borderless tables stay in the text. Adds about 0.3-0.5 s per page. No extra charge. ## `pageRange` (type: `string`): Pages to extract, 1-based, e.g. 1-5, 8, 12- (12 to end). Empty = all pages. Pages outside the range are never charged. ## `maxPagesPerPdf` (type: `integer`): Pages beyond this are not extracted or charged; the document row gets status partial with errorCode pages\_capped. Raise it deliberately for long documents. ## `maxPages` (type: `integer`): Hard stop for the whole run. Your main cost control: at $0.0003 per page, 5000 pages = $1.50. Documents not reached are reported with errorCode budget\_exhausted and are free. 0 = no limit. ## `maxPdfMb` (type: `integer`): Files larger than this are refused before download (Content-Length) and aborted during download. Free error row too\_large. The effective cap is also bounded by the run's memory (memory MB / 4). ## `ocr` (type: `boolean`): Run Tesseract (English) on pages that have no text layer but contain an image. Such pages are charged as OCR page ($0.003) instead of page. Off = those pages are delivered empty with needsOcr true, free. ## `ocrLanguage` (type: `string`): Tesseract language pack. Only packs shipped in the image are listed. ## `maxOcrPagesPerPdf` (type: `integer`): OCR cost control. Remaining image-only pages are delivered empty with needsOcr true and are not charged. ## `chunkSize` (type: `integer`): Used only in chunk mode. 1500 characters is roughly 375 tokens. Split at paragraph, then sentence, then hard cut. ## `chunkOverlap` (type: `integer`): Tail of the previous chunk repeated at the start of the next. Clamped to half of chunkSize. ## `pdfPassword` (type: `string`): Applied to every password-protected PDF in this run. Wrong or missing password = free error row password\_required. PDFs whose owner disabled text copying are always skipped (free error row permissions\_restricted); there is no override. ## Actor input object example ```json { "urls": [ "https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf" ], "outputMode": "page", "includeMarkdown": true, "extractTables": false, "maxPagesPerPdf": 100, "maxPages": 5000, "maxPdfMb": 50, "ocr": false, "ocrLanguage": "eng", "maxOcrPagesPerPdf": 50, "chunkSize": 1500, "chunkOverlap": 200 } ``` # Actor output Schema ## `items` (type: `string`): All page, chunk and document rows from this run as a JSON array. # API You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup. ## JavaScript example ```javascript import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client'; // Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token // Replace the '' with your token const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '', }); // Prepare Actor input const input = { "urls": [ "https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf" ] }; // Run the Actor and wait for it to finish const run = await client.actor("acotr_moonie/pdf-text-extractor").call(input); // Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any) console.log('Results from dataset'); console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`); const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems(); items.forEach((item) => { console.dir(item); }); // 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs ``` ## Python example ```python from apify_client import ApifyClient # Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token # Replace '' with your token. client = ApifyClient("") # Prepare the Actor input run_input = { "urls": ["https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf"] } # Run the Actor and wait for it to finish run = client.actor("acotr_moonie/pdf-text-extractor").call(run_input=run_input) # Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any) print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}") for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items(): print(item) # 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start ``` ## CLI example ```bash echo '{ "urls": [ "https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf" ] }' | apify call acotr_moonie/pdf-text-extractor --silent --output-dataset ``` ## MCP server setup ```json { "mcpServers": { "apify": { "type": "http", "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,acotr_moonie/pdf-text-extractor" } } } ``` The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer ` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations). ## OpenAPI specification Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/IvKrXhrYi0ssivDOu/builds/7egeqtqAC4W1I1cW7/openapi.json