PDF Metadata Extractor - Page Count, Author & Dates by URL

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.

Example: 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

• 2026-11-01: Page text only: the "Try it" block is now headed Example. Code, output and price are unchanged.
• 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.