PDF Font Inspector

Free

List every font in a PDF, flag embedded vs not, see which pages use each. Critical for print prep. Free, in-browser.

What you'll get: every font in the PDF, flagged embedded vs not, with the pages each appears on. For another use, try PDF Inspector.

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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 inspect PDF fonts

Non-embedded fonts get substituted at the printer with whatever's installed. The result is visibly wrong glyphs and inconsistent spacing. Print shops and designers need to know what's embedded BEFORE sending to print.

Print prep

Print shops require all fonts embedded. Confirm before sending to ensure the printer doesn't substitute glyphs and ruin the layout.

PDF/A and PDF/X compliance

Archive (PDF/A) and print (PDF/X) standards mandate font embedding. Validators check this exact thing — knowing in advance saves a re-export.

Brand consistency

Marketing teams confirming brand fonts are embedded in deliverables. Substituted fonts visibly break brand standards on customer-facing materials.

Academic submissions

Many journals and theses require font embedding for archival. Verify before submitting to avoid a 'please re-export' email weeks later.

Forensic analysis

Fonts can be a forensic signal — what software produced the PDF, when, on what platform. The font list narrows down the source.

How PDF Font Inspector works

Three steps, no signup, no uploads.

STEP 1
Drop your PDF
Up to 100 MB. Byte parser walks every page's font resources.
STEP 2
Click Inspect fonts
We dedupe fonts by object number, check the FontDescriptor for /FontFile* refs (embedded), and detect subsetted fonts via the 6-letter prefix pattern.
STEP 3
Review and export
Color-coded badges for embedded vs not. Page list per font. Copy as JSON or download as CSV.

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

Why does font embedding matter?

Non-embedded fonts get substituted at the printer with whatever's installed. Result: visibly wrong glyphs, inconsistent spacing, sometimes complete unreadability. Print shops universally require embedded fonts. PDF/A and PDF/X compliance also require it.

What does 'subsetted' mean?

Modern PDFs often embed only the glyphs actually used — saves file size dramatically. The PDF spec marks subsetted fonts with a 6-letter random prefix (e.g. ABCDEF+TimesNewRoman). Subsetted fonts are still embedded — the prefix just signals the optimization.

What if the inspector shows non-embedded fonts?

Use a tool like Acrobat Pro to embed them, or re-export the source document with 'Embed all fonts' checked. The standard 14 PDF fonts (Helvetica, Times, Courier etc.) are technically allowed unembedded but most modern workflows embed everything for safety.

Why are some fonts shown only on a subset of pages?

PDF references fonts per page. A small font (a sidebar caption font, say) might only appear on a few pages while the body text font appears on all. The page list per font reflects exactly that.

Is anything uploaded?

No. Byte-stream parser runs in your browser.

Want full document overview?

PDF Inspector adds page count, dimensions, word count, metadata, and more — same in-browser, one drop.

Try PDF Inspector

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