# PDF to text API

Give a public PDF's URL and get its text page by page as JSON, with title, author, page count and character counts; choose the page range.

PDF to text API, by monthly plan or one-off packs with one API key: https://glyphcall.com/pdf-to-text-api

## When an agent wants this

- Feed a whitepaper, filing, invoice or paper to an LLM
- Read only a page range of a long report
- Index PDF content for retrieval

## PDF to text, PDF text extraction: extract the text of a PDF document from a URL, page by page

PDF to text, PDF text extraction: extract the text of a PDF document from a URL, page by page. $0.005 per successful call; failed calls are never charged.

Extract the text of a public PDF (up to 10 MB) from its URL, page by page, with title, author and page count. Choose the first page, how many pages (up to 200) and maxChars. arXiv abstract links work. If a site blocks our fetch, the Internet Archive's dated copy is read and the answer says so. Scanned, encrypted and non-PDF files fail uncharged. Use to read papers, invoices, reports and manuals into an agent.

Inputs: url (required): Absolute public http(s) URL of the PDF; firstPage: First page to read (default 1); pages: How many pages to read (1-200, default 20); maxChars: Maximum characters of text returned across all pages (1000-200000, default 50000).

Not in the free calls over HTTP; pay from the first call.

With prepaid credits this tool costs $0.002 a call: $1 by card pays for 500 calls, with no account and no subscription.

With a card key from https://glyphcall.com/credits, in a header or, when your client can only fetch a URL, in the URL:

    curl -H "Authorization: Bearer adt_…" "https://glyphcall.com/pdf/text?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbitcoin.org%2Fbitcoin.pdf"
    curl "https://glyphcall.com/pdf/text?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbitcoin.org%2Fbitcoin.pdf&api_key=adt_…"

Without a key the same URL answers 402 with x402 and MPP terms, so a wallet client pays USDC per call and retries. Over MCP (https://glyphcall.com/mcp) this tool is pdf_text.

Example result:

    {
      "url": "https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf",
      "title": null,
      "author": null,
      "totalPages": 9,
      "firstPage": 1,
      "pagesRead": 1,
      "chars": 46,
      "truncated": true,
      "pages": [
        {
          "page": 1,
          "chars": 46,
          "text": "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"
        }
      ]
    }

Tool page: https://glyphcall.com/tools/pdf-text

## Questions

**Does it OCR scanned PDFs?** No. It extracts the text layer; scanned images without a text layer return little or nothing.

**How large a file?** Up to 10 MB; the default read is 20 pages, settable with pages.

Docs for agents: https://glyphcall.com/llms.txt · OpenAPI: https://glyphcall.com/openapi.json · All guides: https://glyphcall.com/guides