PDF Annotations Export

Free

Export every comment, highlight, sticky note from a PDF — author, date, color, content, page. Free, in-browser.

What you'll get: every comment, highlight, sticky note in the PDF — author, date, color, content, page. CSV / JSON export. For another use, try Extract Links.

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Stays in your browser

Free tools run fully on-device — nothing is uploaded to a server.

No watermarks

Clean output, no branding, no daily limits.

Free forever

No signup required. Seriously.

Why people export PDF annotations

Annotations are the layer most PDF tools hide. Exporting them turns a markup-heavy PDF into a structured review log you can sort, filter, and act on.

Manuscript review

Editors and academic reviewers leave comments throughout a draft. Export the annotations log so authors get a clean change list instead of having to scroll the source.

Legal redline tracking

Multiple lawyers annotate a contract. Export consolidates every comment with author and timestamp — far more reviewable than the PDF itself.

Research note-taking

Highlights and sticky notes across a research paper. Export to .csv, paste into Notion / Obsidian, build a structured reading-notes archive.

Feedback consolidation

Design or product reviews where multiple stakeholders annotate the same PDF. Export turns 50 scattered comments into a sortable spreadsheet.

Audit trail

Compliance workflows where annotations need to be archived separately from the source PDF. Export creates a permanent record with author + date.

How PDF Annotations Export works

Three steps, no signup, no uploads.

STEP 1
Drop your PDF
Up to 100 MB. Byte parser walks every page's /Annots array.
STEP 2
Click Export annotations
We surface every annotation except /Link (those go to Extract Links). Subtype, author, date, color, content text per annotation.
STEP 3
Copy or export
Copy as JSON for pipelines, or download as CSV for spreadsheets. Annotations are grouped by page in the visible output.

What makes pdfcraft ai different

Same engine Chrome uses
PDFium is Google's PDF engine — the one that powers Chrome's built-in PDF viewer. We compile it to WebAssembly so it runs in your browser at near-native speed.
100% local processing
Most free PDF tools upload your file to a server, process it, and stream the result back. We don't. Your file lives in your browser tab and never touches our infrastructure. Verifiable in your browser's Network panel.
No watermark, no signup, no daily limit
Convert 1 PDF or 1,000. We don't gate on volume because there's nothing to gate on — the engine runs on your machine.
Honest about limitations
When something the tool can't do (encrypted PDFs, cross-reference streams), we tell you clearly instead of failing silently. Same for partial results: sampled vs exact, embedded vs not.
Open standards, free engines
PDFium is BSD/Apache licensed (free for any use). We don't pay vendor license fees and pass that savings on to you (and to ourselves) as a free, ad-supported tool with no upgrade-to-pro pressure.

Frequently asked questions

What annotation types does it surface?

Highlights, underlines, strikeouts, sticky notes, FreeText, ink drawings, stamps, shapes, and other comment-like types. Skipped: /Link (use Extract Links), /Widget (form fields — use PDF Form Inspector), /Popup (those are auxiliary to comments, not standalone).

Do exported annotations include the actual highlighted text?

We include the /Contents text, which is the comment body the annotator typed. We do NOT include the underlying text the highlight covers — that would require coordinate-based text extraction we don't yet do. Use Search in PDF if you need the highlighted source text.

What if the annotation has no content?

Many highlights and underlines don't have a typed comment — just the markup. We still list them with empty content so you can see the markup pattern. Filter on non-empty content for comments only.

Color information — what's the format?

Hex color codes (#RRGGBB) for visual reference. Useful for filtering — many review workflows use color conventions (yellow = important, red = blocker, green = approved).

Is anything uploaded?

No. Pure byte-stream parsing in your browser.

Need links too?

Extract Links from PDF surfaces /Link annotations specifically — separate scan, complementary output.

Try Extract Links

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