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

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.

$0.002 per PDF, no start fee — cheaper than the paid PDF metadata tools on the Store. 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 — $0.002 per PDF, no start fee

Prices below checked via the Apify Store API on 2026-08-07:

Actor	Pricing	One PDF
This actor	$0.002 per PDF	$0.002
agenscrape/pdf-power-tools	$0.005 per metadata-extracted	$0.005
andok/pdf-text-converter	$0.01 start + $0.001 per item	$0.011
perryay/pdf-metadata-extractor	$0.015 start + $0.01 per extract	$0.025

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.

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