✂️ Split PDF
Extract a page range, delete pages, or split a PDF into separate files. Multiple files come back as one ZIP. Nothing is uploaded — it all runs in your browser.
Choose a PDF, or drop it here
Split in this tab. The document is never uploaded.
What Split PDF Does
Splitting a PDF is the same structural operation as merging, run the other way: selected page objects and everything they reference are copied into a fresh document, and a new cross-reference table is written. No page is rendered, so text stays selectable and searchable and images keep their original compression.
Four jobs share that one mechanism, which is why they are four modes rather than four tools: keep a selection, delete a selection, break the document into single pages, or break it into fixed-size chunks. Deleting is just keeping the inverse.
The selection box accepts what people actually type — "1-3, 7, 10-12", with a bare trailing dash for "to the end". A page outside the document is dropped rather than raising an error, on the principle that a typo should narrow the selection rather than lose the job, and the resolved page list is shown back before you commit so you can see what was understood.
Splitting into many files returns one ZIP. That is not a convenience: browsers block automatic downloads after the first one or two, so a twenty-page document split into twenty files would arrive as two files and eighteen silent failures. The ZIP is built in the page, with no compression, because PDFs are already compressed.
How to Use Split PDF
- Add a PDF, or drop it onto the box
- Choose what to do: keep a selection, delete a selection, one PDF per page, or split every N pages
- Type the pages as ranges, for example "1-3, 7, 10-"
- Check the resolved page list, then split — several files arrive as one ZIP
The four modes
| Mode | What you type | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Keep only these pages | "2-5, 9" | One PDF containing those five pages, in that order |
| Delete these pages | "1, 12-" | One PDF with everything else, original order kept |
| One PDF per page | nothing | A ZIP of N single-page PDFs, numbered and zero-padded |
| Split every N pages | the chunk size | A ZIP of ⌈pages ÷ N⌉ PDFs |
Page selection syntax
| You type | It means |
|---|---|
| 1-3 | Pages 1, 2 and 3 |
| 5 | Page 5 only |
| 5- | Page 5 to the last page |
| -4 | The first page to page 4 |
| 1-3, 7, 10-12 | All three selections combined, in the order written |
| 9999 in a 10-page file | Ignored — out-of-range pages are dropped, not an error |
How to Read Your Result
A single page is rarely a fraction of the file size
A PDF shares resources across pages — embedded fonts, colour profiles, a logo repeated in every header. An extracted page still needs the fonts it uses, so one page pulled from a 40-page report is often far larger than a fortieth of the original. That is the format working correctly, not the tool failing to compress.
Deleting is safer than extracting for long documents
If you want almost everything, name the few pages to remove rather than the many to keep. Less typing, and no risk of silently omitting a page you forgot to list.
The order you type is the order you get
In "keep only these pages" mode the selection is honoured in the order written, so "5, 1, 3" produces a three-page document in that sequence. That makes the mode double as a simple page reorderer.
Limitations & Accuracy Notes
- Encrypted and password-protected documents are refused with a message rather than being partially processed.
- Bookmarks that point at pages which did not come along are dropped; the remaining outline is not rebuilt.
- Form fields are copied, so extracting pages from a filled form can leave fields whose values live on pages you did not keep.
- Digital signatures do not survive, because the document has changed.
- The ZIP is stored, not deflated. It will not be smaller than the sum of the PDFs inside it — which, for already-compressed PDFs, DEFLATE would not achieve either.
- Everything runs in your device’s memory, so a very large scanned document can exhaust an older phone.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I type the page selection?
Can I delete pages instead of keeping them?
Why do I get a ZIP when splitting into separate pages?
Does splitting re-compress the pages?
Will the split file be proportionally smaller?
Are my documents uploaded?
References & Further Reading
- ISO 32000-1 / PDF 32000 specification (Adobe copy)
- pdf-lib — The library copying page objects between documents in your browser