Upload your PDF, select specific pages to extract, and download as separate files. Fast, secure, and free PDF splitter.
Drop your PDF here to split it
Click to browse or drag & drop
TL;DR — Split PDF in 30 seconds
Three steps. Under 30 seconds. Files never leave your browser.
Click Browse or drag and drop your PDF. Works on desktop, iPhone, and Android — no significant file size limit.
A thumbnail preview of every page renders instantly. Click the pages you want to extract, or use Select All / Deselect All to choose them in bulk.
Click Split Pages and your selected pages download as a ZIP of separate PDF files — no watermarks, no signup required.
Why PDFcrest
Click-to-select thumbnails, no daily limits, no watermarks — the simplest way to extract PDF pages.
Split PDF files without re-encoding pages. All fonts, images, hyperlinks, and layouts from the source PDF are preserved exactly in each extracted section.
See a preview of every page before you pick any. Click individual thumbnails, or use Select All / Deselect All, to extract any combination of pages with complete control.
Split PDF free with no daily limit, no account, and no subscription. Extract pages as many times as you need without any paywall.
Split PDF on iPhone, iPad, Android, or desktop directly in your browser. No app download needed.
Choose the "split every page" option to produce one PDF per page. Perfect for processing individual pages separately or distributing specific pages of a report.
Splitting happens entirely on your device using pdf-lib and JSZip. Your PDF is never uploaded to any server — it stays 100% private.
Comparison
| Feature | PDFcrest | Adobe Acrobat Online | SmallPDF / ilovePDF |
|---|---|---|---|
| Split PDF — Free | ✓ Always free | ✗ Limited free tier | ✗ 2 tasks/day |
| No Signup Required | ✓ Zero signup | ✗ Adobe account | ✗ Email required |
| No Watermarks | ✓ Never | ✓ | ✗ Free adds watermark |
| Select Any Combination of Pages | ✓ Full control | ✓ | ~ Limited |
| Works on iPhone | ✓ Mobile-first | ✓ App required | ✓ |
| File Deleted After Download | ✓ Immediately | ~ Varies | ~ 1 hour |
Use Cases
From students to legal professionals — everyone needs to extract PDF pages at some point.
Extract pages from PDF reports to share only the relevant chapter with a colleague without exposing the full document.
Extract specific journal article pages from a larger anthology PDF. Share only the pages relevant to your research without redistributing the full publication.
Split legal PDFs to isolate specific exhibits, schedules, or clauses. Share only the relevant pages with counterparties without disclosing the full document bundle.
Extract individual invoice pages from a monthly statement PDF. Send each supplier their specific invoice page without sharing the full combined statement.
Split a combined quarterly report into separate departmental PDFs. Each department receives only their relevant section.
Split PDF on iPhone in Safari to extract pages from any document without needing a desktop computer or PDF app.
Extract preview chapters from ebooks, pull out individual magazine articles, or break long-form content into digestible sections for readers.
Workflow Recipes
Extracting pages is rarely the last step. Here are the tool combinations PDFcrest users chain together most often.
Pull out the pages you need, then merge them back together in a different sequence than the original document.
Extracted a large section? Shrink each output file before emailing it or uploading it somewhere with a size limit.
If a document has blank or irrelevant pages mixed in, remove them first so your extracted pages don't need a second pass of cleanup.
Extracting different sections for different people? Add a separate password to each extracted file before sending.
Need just one page as a picture for a slide deck or webpage? Extract it, then convert that single-page PDF to JPG.
Technical Detail
When you split a PDF, PDFcrest uses the PDF-lib library to load the source document and copy the specified pages into one or more new PDF files. The process is non-destructive: page content streams, fonts, images, form fields, and hyperlinks from the source are preserved exactly in each extracted output. PDFcrest does not re-encode or rasterise pages during splitting, so there is no quality loss.
Each page you click in the thumbnail grid becomes its own separate output PDF. For example, clicking pages 2, 7, and 15 produces three separate single-page PDF files — one for page 2, one for page 7, and one for page 15 — all packaged together into a single ZIP archive that downloads instantly. Use Select All to split every page of the document into its own file in one pass.
The output PDFs are standards-compliant and compatible with all major viewers. You can further compress the split PDFs to reduce size or merge them back together in a different order using PDFcrest's free tool suite.
Under the Hood
No black box — this is the literal pdf-lib/JSZip sequence executed for every page you click.
Per selected page (sorted, ascending):
srcPdf = PDFDocument.load(bytes, { ignoreEncryption: true })
zip = new JSZip()
for (pageNum of selectedPages) {
out = PDFDocument.create() # one brand-new document per page
[page] = out.copyPages(srcPdf, [pageNum - 1]) # zero-indexed in pdf-lib
out.addPage(page)
zip.file(`page-${pad(pageNum)}.pdf`, out.save())
}
zip.generateAsync({ type: 'blob', compression: 'STORE' }) # STORE, not DEFLATE
| Step | What it actually means |
|---|---|
| One PDF per page | Every selected page becomes its own standalone PDF file — clicking 3 thumbnails produces 3 separate files in the ZIP, not one PDF containing 3 pages. |
pageNum - 1 | pdf-lib indexes pages from 0, while the thumbnail grid displays human page numbers starting at 1 — this is the conversion between the two. |
compression: 'STORE' | Skips JSZip's DEFLATE compression pass. PDF content is already internally compressed, so re-compressing the ZIP wrapper would cost CPU time for negligible size savings. |
ignoreEncryption: true | Lets pdf-lib open a PDF with an encryption dictionary without throwing. Works for permission-restricted files, not ones that require a password to open. |
FAQ
Answers to the most common questions about splitting and extracting PDF pages
References & Further Reading
Page last updated: · Written and maintained by the PDFcrest team. The per-page extraction logic shown above is taken directly from the code running on this page.