Can I convert PDF to text for free?

Yes — FileSwift converts PDF to plain text completely free with no account required. Free users can convert files up to 10MB and run up to 5 conversions per day. For larger documents or higher volume work, Pro users get 100MB file size limits and unlimited daily conversions for £9/month. Business users get 500MB limits and priority processing for £49/month. All plans include instant TXT downloads with no watermarks. The extracted text file is plain UTF-8 encoded text, ready to open in any text editor, word processor, or paste directly into any application. No software installation is needed — the entire conversion happens in your browser.

How does PDF to text conversion work?

FileSwift uses pdfplumber, a professional Python library, to analyse your PDF at the structural level — reading the actual text objects embedded in the file rather than using OCR or image recognition. This means the extracted text is highly accurate for standard PDFs that contain real text layers. The converter processes each page in order, labels them clearly (Page 1, Page 2 etc), and outputs a single clean .txt file with all content preserved in reading order. The process typically takes 2-10 seconds depending on file size and number of pages.

Will all text be extracted accurately?

For standard PDFs — documents created digitally in Word, Google Docs, or any PDF printer — accuracy is very high. The text layer is extracted directly so formatting like bold and italic won't carry over (plain text doesn't support them) but all words, sentences, and paragraphs will be present. For scanned PDFs — documents created by photographing or scanning physical pages — the text is stored as an image, not as real text, so extraction may return empty or partial results. If your PDF was scanned, you'll need OCR (optical character recognition) which FileSwift will be adding as a future feature.

What is a TXT file and who uses it?

A TXT file is plain text — no formatting, no fonts, no images, just raw characters. It's the most universal file format in existence, readable by every operating system, every text editor, and every programming language. Developers use TXT output to feed PDF content into scripts, databases, or AI models. Writers use it to extract manuscript text from publisher PDFs. Researchers use it to process large document collections programmatically. Data analysts use it as an intermediate step before importing content into spreadsheets or data pipelines. If you need the content of a PDF in its simplest possible form, TXT is the answer.

What are the file size limits?

Free users can convert PDF files up to 10MB per batch with up to 5 conversions per day — no signup required. Pro users (£9/month or £86/year) get 100MB file size limits and unlimited daily conversions. Business users (£49/month or £470/year) get 500MB limits, priority processing, and unlimited conversions. Most text-based PDF documents are well under 10MB so the free tier handles the majority of use cases. Image-heavy PDFs or multi-hundred page documents may exceed the free limit — upgrading to Pro is the solution for those.

Can I convert multiple PDF files to text at once?

Yes — FileSwift supports batch conversion. You can upload multiple PDF files in one go and convert them all to TXT simultaneously. Each PDF produces its own separate TXT file. When converting multiple files, FileSwift automatically packages all the TXT outputs into a single ZIP file for easy download. This is particularly useful for researchers, developers, or anyone processing large collections of documents — instead of converting one file at a time, you can handle an entire batch in a single session.