Split PDF
Extracts the pages you need from a PDF without uploading it anywhere.
Type which pages you want — like 1-3,7 — and get them back as a new PDF, or break the whole document apart page by page. Your file is cut up by your own browser and never sent to a server.
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Runs entirely in your browser. Your PDF is never uploaded — the page fetches its own PDF library and nothing else, and your file is never among the requests.
How to use it
- Drop a PDF onto the box above, or click it to choose one. Its name, page count and size appear once it is read.
- Type the pages you need in the field, like
1-3,7. - Pick an action: extract everything you listed into one PDF, save each comma-separated range as its own file, or split every page of the document. The files download straight away.
What this tool does
A PDF is a stack of pages, and this tool deals them out. It opens your file locally, tells you how many pages it has, and then copies whichever pages you name into brand new documents. The original file is never modified — every output is a fresh PDF containing copies.
The three buttons are three ways of grouping the output. Extract to one PDF gathers every page you listed into a single document, in the order you typed them — the classic “I need pages 2 to 5 of this contract” case. Save each range separately turns each comma-separated piece into its own file: type 1-4,5-8 and you get two four-page PDFs. Split every page ignores the field and deals the entire document out one page per file — useful for feeding single pages into systems that want them separately.
Output files are named after the original, so you can tell them apart later: report.pdf becomes report-pages-1-3.pdf or report-page-7.pdf. Pages keep their exact size, rotation and content — nothing is re-encoded, so there is no quality change and no watermark, and a 300-page manual splits as cleanly as a 3-page letter.
When several files are produced, they download one after another as plain PDFs. There is no zip archive to unpack — though your browser may ask once whether to allow multiple downloads. Splitting every page of a document longer than 60 pages asks for confirmation first, because that is a lot of files.
Ranges, in plain words
The field takes the same notation as a print dialog. A number on its own is one page: 5. A dash makes a run: 2-6 is pages 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Commas combine pieces: 1-3,7,12-14 means the first three pages, page 7, and three more near the end. Spaces are ignored, so 1 - 3, 7 works too. Type a range backwards — 5-3 — and it is quietly corrected to 3-5. Name a page the document does not have and the tool answers with the actual page count instead of failing silently.
Pages may repeat across ranges. If you ask for 1-5,3 with “Save each range separately”, the second file simply gets its own copy of page 3 — nothing is “used up”, because the source is never altered. Inside “Extract to one PDF”, pages follow the order you typed, so 7,1-3 puts page 7 in front. That is an easy way to reorder a handful of pages while extracting them.
Counting pages by eye is the only error-prone part. The number you need is the position in the PDF, not the number printed on the page — a title page and a table of contents often shift the two apart by several pages. Check the position in your viewer’s thumbnail sidebar before typing the range.
Examples
| Task | Field | Button | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Send only the signature page of a 40-page contract | 40 | Extract to one PDF | contract-page-40.pdf |
| Keep chapters as separate files | 1-12,13-27,28-41 | Save each range separately | Three PDFs, one per chapter |
| Drop the cover page | 2-30 | Extract to one PDF | Everything except page 1 |
| One file per page for an upload form | — | Split every page | N one-page PDFs, downloaded in order |
| Pull page 7 in front of pages 1-3 | 7,1-3 | Extract to one PDF | Four pages, page 7 first |
What usually goes wrong
- “Page 12 is out of range.” The document is shorter than the range you typed. The error names the real page count — adjust and go again. Remember the printed page number and the PDF position can differ.
- The file is refused as password-protected. Encrypted PDFs cannot be opened without the password. Unlock the file in your viewer, save a copy, and split that — this tool does not bypass protection.
- Only the first file downloaded. The browser blocked the rest. Look for a “this site is trying to download multiple files” prompt near the address bar, allow it, and run the split again.
- Bookmarks vanished from the pieces. Expected: the outline tree is document-level and is not copied. The pages themselves are complete.
- A 200 MB scan is slow. Everything runs in your device’s memory. It works, and the progress line keeps moving, but a big scanned file takes noticeably longer on a phone than on a laptop.
Doing it without this tool
Any browser. Print to PDF with a page range: open the file, press print, choose “Save as PDF” and type the range. Quick, but the output is a re-print — file size and internal text quality can change, and it is one range at a time.
macOS. Preview: open the thumbnail sidebar, select the pages, and drag them out to the desktop as a new PDF. Clean and offline; fiddly for long documents.
Command line. With poppler installed, pdfseparate file.pdf page-%d.pdf deals every page out, and pdfseparate -f 2 -l 6 file.pdf part-%d.pdf takes a range. qpdf is even closer to this page’s behaviour: qpdf file.pdf --pages . 1-3,7 -- out.pdf mirrors the range syntax exactly.
Online splitters. Almost all of them upload the document to their servers first, and the free tiers cap the number of files per day or stamp the result. For anything with a signature, an account number or a diagnosis on it, the upload is the part to avoid — and it is the part this page does not have.
Privacy: your files never leave your browser
The document is opened, cut apart and reassembled entirely inside your browser. The single network request involved in the job is the page fetching its own PDF engine — an open-source library served from this site. Your file is never in any request, and there is no server-side queue holding your document while you wait. Open the network panel in DevTools and split something: you will see the library load once and then silence.
People split exactly the documents that deserve this caution — contracts down to the page that gets countersigned, medical files down to the one report a clinic needs, statements down to the month an auditor asked for. An online service holds those on its infrastructure under a retention policy; here there is nothing to hold. If you also need the extracted text rather than the pages, PDF to text works the same local-only way, and Merge PDF puts pieces back together.
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Frequently asked questions
Numbers and dashes, separated by commas: 5 is one page, 2-6 is a run, 1-3,7,12-14 is a mix. Spaces are fine, a reversed range like 5-3 is corrected automatically, and a page number beyond the document produces a clear error.
No. The file is opened and cut apart by your own browser. The page fetches its own PDF library once, and your document is never among the requests.
Yes — the Split every page button makes a one-page PDF per page and downloads them one after another. Over 60 pages, the tool asks for confirmation first, because that is a lot of downloads.
Multiple output files are downloaded one by one as plain PDFs — there is no zip archive. Your browser may ask once for permission to download multiple files; allow it and the rest follow.
No. An encrypted file is refused with a clear message. Unlock it with the password in your PDF viewer and save an unlocked copy first — this tool does not bypass protection.
No. Pages are copied into the new files exactly as they are — no re-encoding, no recompression, no watermark. Each page keeps its size and rotation.
Yes. Ranges may overlap — each output file gets its own copy of the page, and the original is never modified at all.