PDF to Text and Markdown (with OCR for scanned PDFs)

Convert PDFs into clean text and Markdown with headings, bullet lists and paragraphs. Most two-column layouts read in the right order, running headers, footers and sideways margin text are removed, and words broken across lines are joined again. Scanned pages are found automatically and read with OCR. Paste PDF links or upload a file. It is built for RAG, LLM and AI agent pipelines, and you need no API key.

Price: US$0.0015 per page, plus a US$0.001 run fee. Scanned pages cost US$0.003 extra for OCR. A 50-page report costs US$0.076.

What people use it for

• RAG and chatbots: Markdown keeps headings, so you can split documents by section before embedding.
• AI agents: give an agent any PDF link and get text it can read.
• Research: pull the text out of reports, papers and filings in bulk.
• Search indexes: make a PDF library searchable.
• Old scans: OCR turns image-only PDFs into text.

Example output

Real output from the sample file (IRS Form W-9, 6 pages, public domain). Markdown excerpt:

# General Instructions

Section references are to the Internal Revenue Code unless otherwise noted. Future developments. For the latest information about developments related to Form W-9 and its instructions, such as legislation enacted after they were published, go to www.irs.gov/FormW9.

## What’s New

Line 3a has been modified to clarify how a disregarded entity completes this line...

fileName	title	pageCount	pagesProcessed	ocrPages	charCount
fw9.pdf	Form W-9 (Rev. March 2024)	6	6	[]	37714

{
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf",
  "fileName": "fw9.pdf",
  "title": "Form W-9 (Rev. March 2024)",
  "pageCount": 6,
  "pagesProcessed": 6,
  "ocrPages": [],
  "charCount": 37714,
  "truncatedInDataset": false,
  "markdownUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/.../records/pdf-001.md",
  "textUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/.../records/pdf-001.txt",
  "text": "Form W-9 ...",
  "markdown": "...# General Instructions\n\nSection references are to...",
  "processedAt": "2026-10-27T09:00:00+00:00"
}

ocrPages lists the page numbers that were read with OCR. Very long documents are cut at 1.5 million characters in the dataset (truncatedInDataset: true). The full text and Markdown are always in the files at textUrl and markdownUrl.

Input

Field	What it does	Default
pdfUrls	Direct links to PDF files, up to 200. 200 MB per file.	1 sample PDF
uploadedFile	Or upload one PDF from your computer.	none
ocrMode	auto uses OCR only on pages with no text layer. always reads every page with OCR. never skips OCR.	auto
ocrLanguages	Up to 4 of 20 languages for OCR, including English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Hindi.	English
maxPagesPerPdf	Only the first pages up to this number are processed and billed, 1 to 2,000.	300
includePages	Add the text of each page separately, for citations and page-level chunking.	false

Pricing

Event	Price
Run fee, once per run (per GB of memory; the default is 1 GB)	US$0.001
Page processed	US$0.0015
OCR on a scanned page (added to the page price)	US$0.003

Examples: a 1-page PDF costs US$0.0025. A 50-page report costs US$0.076. A 100-page scanned document costs US$0.451. Files that fail are listed with the reason and not charged.

Limits

• Password-protected PDFs are refused.
• Tables come out as text lines. Their cell structure is not kept.
• Markdown headings are detected from font size. Headings set in bold at body size come out as normal text.
• Pages full of formulas, such as maths papers, can come out with some sentences out of order around the formulas.
• OCR works best on printed text scanned at 200 dpi or more.

FAQ

Why Markdown? LLMs read Markdown well, and headings make it easy to split long documents into meaningful chunks.

How does it know a page is scanned? A page with no text layer, or with almost no text and an image, is treated as scanned.

Is my file stored? It is processed on the run's temporary disk and deleted. The results are saved in your own Apify storage.

Can an AI agent call it? Yes. Pass a PDF link and get text and Markdown back as JSON.

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