How to Split a PDF Into Separate Files

Open the [Split PDF](/split-pdf) tool, drop in your file, mark where you want the cuts, and download. That is the whole job. The PDF is read inside your browser, so the file is never uploaded to a server, which matters for contracts, scans of IDs and anything else you would not email to a stranger.

You do not need an account, and there is no watermark on the output. The tool shows a thumbnail strip of every page, so you cut by looking at the pages rather than guessing page numbers. If you only want to pull a few pages out and throw the rest away, skip ahead to the section on extracting instead, because that is a different job from splitting.

Each gap in the thumbnail strip is a cut. Click the gap after page 3 and after page 7 on an 11-page document and you get three files: pages 1 to 3, pages 4 to 7, and pages 8 to 11. A cut always means "start a new file after this page", so the last piece runs to the end of the document without you marking anything.

Click a gap again to remove the cut, or clear all cuts and start over. This is the right method for a PDF that is really several documents scanned into one, such as an invoice, a receipt and a contract stapled together, where each piece has a different length and no pattern.

When the pieces are all the same size, type a number instead of clicking. Enter 5 on a 12-page PDF and the tool sets cuts after pages 5 and 10, giving pages 1 to 5, 6 to 10, and 11 to 12. The last file is simply whatever is left over, so it can be shorter than the rest.

The number has to be between 1 and one less than the page count. Entering the full page count would produce zero cuts, so the tool rejects it rather than quietly clearing the cuts you already set. Enter 1 to get one file per page, which is the usual answer to "how do I split a PDF into individual pages".

One piece downloads as a plain PDF. Two or more pieces download together as a single .zip, with the files inside a folder named after your original PDF. Inside, each file is named after its page range, for example report-pages-1-5.pdf and report-pages-6-10.pdf, and a single-page piece becomes report-page-7.pdf.

Because the page range is in the file name, the pieces sort in order in any file manager and you can tell which is which without opening them. If you need different names, rename after unzipping, since the tool does not ask for names up front.

Splitting keeps every page of the original, spread across several files. If you only want some of the pages, use [Extract PDF Pages](/extract-pdf-pages) to keep a selection in one new file, or [Delete PDF Pages](/delete-pdf-pages) to remove the ones you do not want. Both are quicker than splitting and then discarding the pieces.

The reverse job is covered in our [guide to merging PDFs](/blog/how-to-merge-pdf-files). If the pages are in the wrong order before you cut, fix that first with the steps in [reordering pages in a PDF](/blog/how-to-reorder-pages-in-a-pdf).

Each output file is built by copying the chosen pages into a brand-new PDF. Page content, text and images come across, but document-level extras such as the outline of bookmarks do not follow the pages, so a long report that relied on its bookmark panel will open as plain pages. The same thing happens when pages are reordered, which we explain in [why bookmarks disappear after reordering](/blog/pdf-bookmarks-disappear-after-reordering-pages).

Open the first and last piece and check the page counts add up to the original. If you are comparing paid splitters first, see [PDF splitting tools compared](/blog/best-pdf-splitting-tools-pricing-compared).