Split PDF
Take the pages you need, or cut the document into pieces. Both happen on your device, and neither one sends your file anywhere.
How to use it
Open the PDF
Click the box or drag a file in. The tool reads the page count immediately and shows it next to the file name, so you can check it against what you expected before doing anything else.
Choose which job you want
“Pull out pages” produces a single new PDF containing the pages you list. “Split into files” cuts the document into pieces of a fixed length and gives you all of them at once.
For extracting, type the pages
Use the numbers the PDF reader shows you: 3 for one page, 1-5 for a run, and 1-3, 7, 10-12 to pick several groups. Full-width commas and Chinese punctuation are accepted too, so you do not have to switch input methods.
Download and check
Extracting gives you one PDF. Splitting gives you a ZIP containing every part, numbered so the pieces stay in order when you unzip them. The result box keeps a link in case your browser blocked the automatic download.
Two different jobs that both get called “splitting”
The two modes exist because the underlying requests are not the same, and a tool that only does one of them leaves you doing the other by hand.
Extracting is about a subset. You want pages 12 to 14 of a 90-page report because those are the only three the other person needs to read. You want the signature page of a contract on its own. You want the one page with the bank details, not the twenty pages of terms around it. The output is one small file, and the rest of the document is deliberately left behind.
Splitting is about dividing a whole. A pile of invoices was scanned into a single 200-page PDF and the bookkeeping system wants one file per invoice. Lecture notes arrived as one PDF per course and you want one per topic. Chapter markers exist in the printed book but not in the scan, so you are reconstructing them by page number.
If you are unsure which you want: if you can name the pages you need, extract. If the document is a container for many documents, split.
PDF page 12 is often not the page printed with a 12
This trips people up more than anything else here, and it is not a bug in any tool — it is how PDFs work. A PDF has a sequence of pages and nothing else. Any numbers you see printed on them are ink, drawn as text or as part of a scan. The file has no idea they exist.
So a report with a cover page, a table of contents and a page of acknowledgements before the introduction is usually offset by three. The page printed “1” is PDF page 4. If you ask this tool for page 1, you get the cover, which is correct behaviour and not what you wanted.
Two reliable ways to get it right. First, look at the page indicator in your PDF reader rather than the number printed on the page — every reader shows the real index somewhere, usually as “4 / 92” in a toolbar. Second, if the document is scanned and has no page numbers at all, count from the beginning and write the range down before you come here, because guessing produces a file you then have to redo.
The safe way to leave a page out before sharing
A surprisingly common task: you have a document to send, and one page must not go with it — a page showing your account number, an internal cost sheet, a draft clause that was cut.
The instinct is to cover it up. Do not. Drawing a black rectangle over text in a PDF editor does not remove the text; it paints over it. The characters are still in the file, still selectable, still copyable by anyone who opens it in a different reader or runs it through a text extractor. This has leaked real data in real organisations, repeatedly.
Removing the page is a different operation with a different result: the page object is never written to the output file, so the content is genuinely not there. Extracting the pages you do want — rather than blacking out the one you do not — is the version of this that actually works. Keep the original file unshared, and send the extracted copy.
Splitting makes the total size bigger, not smaller
This surprises people who expect smaller files from smaller documents, so it is worth being concrete. We measured it: a six-page PDF with a shared font and a shared image, 31 KB in total, split into six single-page files, came to 181 KB — about 5.8 times the original.
The reason is that a PDF stores shared resources once. The font is embedded a single time and every page points at it. When you split, each output file has to stand on its own, so the font and any shared image are copied into each part. Six files, six copies.
The practical consequence: do not use this tool hoping to shrink something. If the goal is a file small enough to email, compress it instead. And if your only reason for splitting is to make the parts easier to send, consider extracting the range you actually need — one output file has no duplication at all, and the pages you leave out cost nothing.
What you give up when a document is cut apart
The same losses apply whether you merge or split, and they are inherent to rebuilding a PDF rather than editing it.
- Bookmarks and the outline tree are not carried over. If the source had a navigation sidebar, the parts will not.
- Fillable form fields do not survive, and neither does anything a recipient typed into them.
- Digital signatures become invalid, because the signed bytes have changed. A signature verifies one exact file, not “a document like this one”.
- Attachments embedded in the PDF are dropped.
- Page content, page size, orientation and text quality are preserved exactly — pages are copied as objects, never re-rendered as images.
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Frequently asked questions
Is my PDF uploaded to split it?
No. The PDF engine runs inside the page you already loaded, reads the file from your disk, and writes the result to your downloads folder. There is no server involved, which you can confirm by watching the Network panel in your browser developer tools while the tool works.
How do I specify pages like 1-3, 7, 10-12?
Type them separated by commas or spaces. Ranges use a hyphen. Full-width commas, Chinese commas and semicolons are all accepted, so you can type naturally without switching input methods. The order you type is the order in the output, and a repeated page appears twice.
Why did I get the cover page when I asked for page 1?
Because PDF page numbers are the file’s own sequence, not the numbers printed on the pages. Front matter — cover, contents, acknowledgements — shifts everything. Check the page indicator in your PDF reader, which shows the real index, rather than the printed folio.
Why is the ZIP bigger than the original PDF?
Because splitting duplicates shared resources. A font embedded once in the original gets copied into every part, since each part has to open correctly on its own. A six-page file can easily become six files totalling five or six times the original. Use the compressor if your goal is a smaller file.
Can I use this to remove a page before sending a document?
Yes, and it is the right way to do it — extract the pages you want and send that file. What does not work is covering text with a black rectangle in an editor: the text is still in the file and still copyable. Removing the page entirely is what actually removes the content.
Do split files keep their bookmarks and signatures?
No. Bookmarks, form fields and embedded attachments are lost, and digital signatures are invalidated because the signed bytes changed. This is true of every tool that rebuilds a PDF, including desktop software.
Is there a limit on how many pages I can split?
No fixed limit from us — the work is done on your machine. The real constraint is memory, since every part is built in the tab before the ZIP is assembled. A few hundred pages is fine; a two-thousand-page scan is better done in a few passes.