PDF Text Extractor

PDF Text Extractor — Extract Text & Metadata from PDF Files by URL

Extract embedded text and metadata from any PDF file by URL. Get the document title, author, creation and modification dates, full text, a page-by-page breakdown, and an optional Markdown conversion — no manual parsing, no PDF library setup required. Export as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

Send a list of PDF URLs and get back structured text, document metadata, and per-page content in seconds — with an optional Markdown output ready for LLMs, RAG pipelines, and documentation tools.

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Apify Actor: parsebird/pdf-text-extractor — extracts embedded text and metadata from PDF files by URL. Two pay-per-event charges: pdf-extracted at $0.00299/result on the Free plan ($2.99/1000), $0.00259/result on Bronze ($2.59/1000), $0.00219/result on Silver ($2.19/1000), $0.0015/result on Gold ($1.50/1000); markdown-generated (only when convertToMarkdown is enabled) at $0.0005/result on Free/Bronze/Silver ($0.50/1000), $0.0004/result on Gold ($0.40/1000). Call via ApifyClient: client.actor("parsebird/pdf-text-extractor").call(run_input={"urls": ["https://example.com/report.pdf"], "includePages": true, "convertToMarkdown": false, "maxConcurrency": 3, "timeoutPerPdfSecs": 60}). Inputs: urls (array of strings, required — direct URLs to PDF files), includePages (boolean, default true — include per-page text breakdown), convertToMarkdown (boolean, default false — also generate a Markdown version of each PDF; skipped for PDFs over 25MB or 500 pages), maxConcurrency (integer, default 3, 1-10 — parallel PDF downloads), timeoutPerPdfSecs (integer, default 60 — download timeout per PDF in seconds). PDFs over 70MB are skipped with an error instead of being downloaded in full. Output: dataset with url, fileName, title, author, subject, keywords, creator, producer, creationDate, modificationDate, pageCount, fullText, pages (array of {pageNumber, text}), markdown (if enabled and under the size/page limit), pdfVersion, fileSizeBytes, error. No OCR — extracts embedded text only; scanned PDFs with no selectable text return empty text. API docs: https://docs.apify.com/api/v2 Token: https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations

What does PDF Text Extractor do?

PDF Text Extractor is an Apify Actor that downloads PDF files from URLs you provide and extracts their embedded text and metadata — no need to install or maintain a PDF parsing library yourself.

• 📄 Full text and metadata — title, author, subject, keywords, creator, producer, creation/modification dates, page count, and PDF version
• 📑 Per-page breakdown — get text split by page, in addition to the full document text
• 📝 Optional Markdown conversion — turn each PDF into clean Markdown (headings, lists, basic formatting preserved), ready for LLM ingestion, RAG pipelines, or documentation sites
• ⚡ Concurrent downloads — process multiple PDFs in parallel with configurable concurrency (1-10) and a per-file download timeout
• 🛡️ Per-file error handling — a broken link or password-protected PDF doesn't stop the run; every URL gets its own result with an error field
• ⏱️ Scheduling & API access — run on autopilot with Apify Schedules and pull results via the Apify API or client libraries
• 📊 Multiple export formats — download as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or HTML

This Actor extracts embedded text only — it does not perform OCR (Optical Character Recognition). Scanned PDFs that contain only images, with no selectable text layer, will return an empty fullText.

What data can you extract from a PDF?

Field	Description
url	The source URL of the PDF
fileName	File name parsed from the URL
title	Document title from PDF metadata
author	Document author from PDF metadata
subject	Document subject from PDF metadata
keywords	Document keywords from PDF metadata
creator	Application that created the source document
producer	Application that produced the PDF
creationDate	Document creation date
modificationDate	Document last-modified date
pageCount	Total number of pages
fullText	Full extracted text of the document
pages	Per-page text breakdown (when includePages is enabled)
markdown	Markdown version of the document (when convertToMarkdown is enabled)
pdfVersion	PDF format version (e.g. "1.6")
fileSizeBytes	Downloaded file size in bytes
error	Error message if the PDF could not be downloaded or parsed, otherwise null

How to use PDF Text Extractor

1. Go to PDF Text Extractor on Apify Store and click Try for free
2. Paste one or more direct PDF URLs into the PDF URLs field
3. Toggle Include per-page text on or off depending on whether you need a page-by-page breakdown
4. Toggle Convert to Markdown on if you want a Markdown version of each document
5. Adjust Max concurrency and Timeout per PDF if needed — the defaults work for most runs
6. Click Start and wait for the run to finish
7. Export your data as JSON, CSV, or Excel, or access it via the Apify API

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
urls	array	Yes	—	Direct URLs to PDF files
includePages	boolean	No	true	Include per-page text breakdown
convertToMarkdown	boolean	No	false	Also generate a Markdown version of each PDF
maxConcurrency	integer	No	3	Parallel PDF downloads (1-10)
timeoutPerPdfSecs	integer	No	60	Download timeout per PDF in seconds

PDFs over 70MB are skipped with an error before being fully downloaded. Markdown conversion (convertToMarkdown) is additionally skipped — with text and metadata still returned — for PDFs over 25MB or 500 pages.

Minimal input:

{
  "urls": ["https://example.com/document.pdf"]
}

Output example

{
  "url": "https://www.orimi.com/pdf-test.pdf",
  "fileName": "pdf-test.pdf",
  "title": "PDF Test Page",
  "author": "Yukon Department of Education",
  "subject": null,
  "keywords": null,
  "creator": "Acrobat PDFMaker 7.0.7 for Word",
  "producer": "Acrobat Distiller 7.0.5 (Windows)",
  "creationDate": "2008-06-04T15:44:00.000Z",
  "modificationDate": "2008-06-04T15:47:36.000Z",
  "pageCount": 1,
  "fullText": "PDF Test File  Congratulations, your computer is equipped with a PDF reader...",
  "pages": [
    {
      "pageNumber": 1,
      "text": "PDF Test File  Congratulations, your computer is equipped with a PDF reader..."
    }
  ],
  "pdfVersion": "1.6",
  "fileSizeBytes": 20597,
  "error": null
}

With convertToMarkdown enabled, each item also includes a markdown field containing the document converted to Markdown.

Download results in JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or HTML, or access via the Apify API.

Use cases

• 🤖 LLM & RAG pipelines — feed clean text or Markdown from PDF reports, whitepapers, and manuals into an embedding or retrieval pipeline
• 🧾 Invoice and document processing — pull text from invoices, contracts, or forms for downstream parsing
• 📚 Knowledge base ingestion — convert PDF documentation into Markdown for static sites, wikis, or search indexes
• 🔍 Content auditing — extract metadata (author, creation date, producer) across a batch of PDFs for compliance or provenance checks
• 🔌 Pipeline integration — feed extracted text into Google Sheets, Slack, Zapier, Make, or custom systems via Apify Integrations

How it works

1. The Actor downloads each URL in urls, up to maxConcurrency in parallel, respecting timeoutPerPdfSecs per file
2. It verifies the downloaded file is a valid PDF, then parses embedded text and metadata directly from the PDF structure — no OCR is performed
3. If includePages is enabled, text is also broken down per page
4. If convertToMarkdown is enabled, the Actor additionally converts the document to Markdown, preserving headings, lists, and basic formatting
5. Every result is pushed to the dataset as soon as it's ready — including failed URLs, which get an error message instead of stopping the run

How to use via API — Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("parsebird/pdf-text-extractor").call(run_input={
    "urls": [
        "https://example.com/report-2024.pdf",
        "https://example.com/whitepaper.pdf",
    ],
    "includePages": True,
    "convertToMarkdown": True,
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    if item["error"]:
        print(f"Failed: {item['url']} — {item['error']}")
    else:
        print(f"{item['fileName']}: {item['pageCount']} pages, {len(item['fullText'])} chars")

How to use via API — JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('parsebird/pdf-text-extractor').call({
    urls: [
        'https://example.com/report-2024.pdf',
        'https://example.com/whitepaper.pdf',
    ],
    includePages: true,
    convertToMarkdown: true,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    if (item.error) {
        console.log(`Failed: ${item.url} — ${item.error}`);
    } else {
        console.log(`${item.fileName}: ${item.pageCount} pages, ${item.fullText.length} chars`);
    }
});

How much does it cost to extract text from PDFs?

PDF Text Extractor uses pay-per-event pricing with two separate events: one for text extraction, and one for Markdown conversion (only charged when convertToMarkdown is enabled). Platform usage (compute, bandwidth) is not charged separately.

How much does it cost to extract text from 1,000 PDFs?

$2.99 on the Free plan, $2.59 on Bronze, $2.19 on Silver, or $1.50 on Gold — plus $0.50 ($0.40 on Gold) per 1,000 if you also enable Markdown conversion. New users get a free trial with platform credit to try the Actor before committing.

How much does it cost to extract text from 100 PDFs?

Around $0.30 on the Free plan for text extraction alone, or about $0.35 with Markdown conversion enabled.

Pricing

Event	Price per event	Price per 1,000
pdf-extracted	$0.00299 (Free) / $0.00259 (Bronze) / $0.00219 (Silver) / $0.0015 (Gold)	$2.99 / $2.59 / $2.19 / $1.50
markdown-generated	$0.0005 (Free/Bronze/Silver) / $0.0004 (Gold)	$0.50 / $0.40

pdf-extracted fires once per PDF successfully downloaded and parsed. markdown-generated fires once per PDF only when convertToMarkdown is enabled and a Markdown version was produced. Failed downloads are not charged.

Is it legal to use PDF Text Extractor?

This Actor only downloads and processes PDF files at URLs you explicitly provide — it does not crawl or discover content on its own. You are responsible for ensuring you have the right to download and process the documents you submit, and for complying with any applicable copyright, privacy, or data protection laws in your jurisdiction.

Related Actors

Looking for more content extraction and data processing tools? Check out these ParseBird actors:

• X/Twitter Article Markdown API — Convert X/Twitter articles and tweets to Markdown by tweet ID
• HTTP Request — Send API calls and forward responses to webhooks from the cloud
• Data Cleaner — Clean, normalize, and format scraped or extracted data
• Data Deduplicator — Merge and deduplicate Apify datasets by any field combination

Browse all ParseBird actors on Apify Store.

FAQ

Does it work with scanned PDFs? No. This Actor extracts embedded text from PDFs. Scanned documents that contain only images (no selectable text) will return empty text. For scanned PDFs, you would need an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) solution.

What happens if a PDF URL is broken or returns an error? That item is pushed to the dataset with error set to a descriptive message (e.g. "HTTP 404 while downloading PDF") and all other fields set to null. The run continues processing the remaining URLs — one bad link never stops the batch. Failed items are not charged.

What happens with password-protected PDFs? The item is returned with error: "PDF is password-protected". This Actor does not attempt to guess or brute-force passwords.

What does convertToMarkdown actually convert? It runs the PDF through a Markdown converter that preserves structural elements like headings and lists where they're detectable in the PDF layout, in addition to the plain-text fullText and pages output.

Does includePages: false remove fullText too? No. fullText (the full document text) is always included. includePages only controls whether the additional pages array with a per-page breakdown is included.

What does maxConcurrency control? How many PDFs are downloaded and processed in parallel. Higher values finish large batches faster; lower values are gentler on the source server and use less memory per run.

Is there a maximum PDF size? Yes. PDFs over 70MB are skipped with an error before being fully downloaded. Markdown conversion is additionally skipped — with text and metadata still returned normally — for PDFs over 25MB or 500 pages, since converting very large or image-heavy documents to Markdown is disproportionately slow.

Why did I get text and metadata but no markdown? Either convertToMarkdown wasn't enabled, or the PDF exceeded the 25MB / 500-page Markdown limit above. Check the run log for a specific message.

Can I schedule recurring runs? Yes. Use Apify Schedules to re-process a set of PDF URLs on a recurring basis.

Can I access the data via API? Yes. Use the Apify API or the official Python and JavaScript client libraries to run the Actor and retrieve results programmatically.

What export formats are supported? JSON, CSV, Excel (XLSX), XML, and HTML. Download directly from the Apify Console or via the API.

Is there a free trial? Yes. New Apify users get free platform credit to try PDF Text Extractor before committing to a paid plan.

I found an issue or have a feature request. Open an issue on the Issues tab or contact ParseBird via the Apify Console.