PDF Metadata Extractor — read PDF info by URL, no full download parsing

PDF Metadata Extractor reads a PDF by URL and returns its page count, PDF version, title, author, creator, producer and dates plus a short text preview, at $0.02 per PDF on the Apify Free plan.

You give it	You get back	You pay (Free plan)
One PDF URL or a list of up to 50 (25 by default)	Per PDF: ok, url, pages, version, info (title, author, subject, keywords, creator, producer, createdAt, modifiedAt), preview	$0.02 per PDF

Pay per result only: no subscription, no start fee. A 404 or non-PDF URL returns {ok:false, error} and is not charged. Paid Apify plans get Store discounts on the price above.

Try it in one click

The input form is already filled in with this example. Press Start and you get the output below.

{
  "url": "https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tests/xhtml/testfiles/resources/pdf/dummy.pdf"
}

Real output from that exact input (run on 2026-09-24; long arrays shortened to a few entries and long text cut for display):

[
  {
    "ok": true,
    "url": "https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tests/xhtml/testfiles/resources/pdf/dummy.pdf",
    "pages": 1,
    "version": "1.4",
    "preview": "Dummy PDF file"
  }
]

Extract a PDF's metadata straight from a URL: page count, PDF version, and the full info dictionary (title, author, subject, keywords, creator, producer, creation/modification dates), plus a short text preview — without processing the whole document. Fast and lightweight. Single PDF or bulk.

$0.02 per PDF, no start fee. Failed fetches are recorded free.

What you get

• Page count and PDF version.
• Info dictionary: title, author, subject, keywords, creator, producer.
• Normalized dates: createdAt / modifiedAt as ISO 8601 (from PDF D:YYYYMMDD... format).
• Text preview: first ~500 characters of page one.
• Fail-soft: a 404 or non-PDF URL returns {ok:false, error} and is never charged.

Input

{ "url": "https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tests/xhtml/testfiles/resources/pdf/dummy.pdf", "urls": ["https://example.com/report.pdf"], "maxPdfs": 25 }

Output (real run, 2026-08-07)

{
  "ok": true,
  "url": "https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tests/xhtml/testfiles/resources/pdf/dummy.pdf",
  "pages": 1,
  "version": "1.4",
  "info": {
    "title": null,
    "author": "Evangelos Vlachogiannis",
    "creator": "Writer",
    "producer": "OpenOffice.org 2.1",
    "createdAt": "2007-02-23T15:56:37.000Z",
    "modifiedAt": null
  },
  "preview": "Dummy PDF file"
}

Pricing — $0.02 per PDF, no start fee

$0.02 per PDF on the Free plan, less on paid plans: $0.0186 Bronze, $0.0174 Silver, $0.016 Gold and up. Failed fetches are never charged.

Limits (honest ones)

• Reads the PDF info dictionary; XMP metadata packets are not parsed separately.
• The preview is a short first-page text sample, not full text extraction (use a text-extraction actor for that).
• Encrypted/password-protected PDFs may return no info; that record is uncharged if parsing fails.
• maxPdfs capped at 50 per run.

FAQ

• Does it download the whole PDF? It fetches the file but only renders page one for the preview, keeping runs fast.
• Why is a field null? The PDF simply did not set that info key — the source is the file's own metadata.
• Can it read many PDFs at once? Yes — pass urls (up to 50). One charge per successfully processed PDF.
• What about a broken link? You get an {ok:false, error} record, uncharged.
• Does it read encrypted PDFs? Password-protected files may return no info. If parsing fails, the record is uncharged.

Use from code or AI agents

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/EliAI~pdf-metadata-extractor/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"url":"https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tests/xhtml/testfiles/resources/pdf/dummy.pdf"}'

Callable as an agent tool through the Apify MCP server (mcp.apify.com).

Who uses it

• Librarians and archivists cataloging a list of PDF links by title, author and creation date
• SEO teams checking whether PDFs on their site carry a real title and subject in the info dictionary
• Legal and compliance reviewers checking author and producer fields on documents before they are published
• Researchers triaging a list of paper URLs by page count and text preview before downloading
• OSINT analysts reading creator software and modification dates from publicly posted PDFs

Changelog

• 2026-09-24: New summary at the top of this page: what you send, what you get, the price, and a real output from the prefilled example.