Search in PDF

Free

Find any word or phrase across every page of a PDF. Case-sensitive and whole-word options, with surrounding context. Free, in-browser.

What you'll get: every match of your query across the PDF, with surrounding context and page refs. 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 search inside PDFs

PDF readers' built-in search is fine for one document. When you need fast results across pages, with surrounding context, in your browser without opening Acrobat — that's this tool.

Research literature review

Find every mention of a term across a 200-page paper without scrolling. The context window shows where each match lives so you don't have to flip back to the source.

Compliance and audit

Searching contracts, policies, or regulatory filings for specific clauses. Whole-word + case-sensitive options narrow results to exact matches that matter for legal review.

Textbook / manual lookup

Manuals are long. Knowing the term is on page 247 and reading the surrounding sentence is faster than scrolling to find it.

Editing and copy review

Find every typo, every brand-name misspelling, every outdated reference across a draft. Faster than manually re-reading.

Citation / quote verification

Confirm a quote you want to use is actually in the source. Whole-word matching narrows ambiguous queries to exact phrases.

How Search in PDF works

Three steps, no signup, no uploads.

STEP 1
Drop your PDF
Up to 100 MB. PDFium extracts the text per page in your browser.
STEP 2
Type your query
Word or phrase. Toggle case-sensitive or whole-word if you want narrower matches. Press Enter.
STEP 3
Read results in context
Each match shows ~50 chars before and after, plus the page number. Click 'New search' to refine without re-uploading.

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

Does it work on scanned PDFs?

Only if the scan has an OCR text layer. Image-only scans have no extractable text — run Make PDF Searchable first to OCR the document, then come back here.

How many matches can I get?

Up to 200 per query. Beyond that, the page becomes unwieldy and the user should refine. Whole-word matching usually trims results meaningfully when a query is too broad.

Does it search bookmarks, comments, or metadata?

No, just the page text. For bookmarks, use the PDF Outline Viewer. For metadata (title, author, etc.), use PDF Inspector.

What's the difference vs AI · Semantic Search?

This tool finds literal text matches. AI · Semantic Search finds passages by meaning — even if the query words don't appear verbatim in the document. Different tools for different intents. This one's free; semantic search uses credits.

Is anything uploaded?

No. PDFium runs as WebAssembly in your browser. Verify in your browser's Network panel.

Need search by meaning, not just literal matches?

AI · Semantic Search finds passages even when the query words don't appear verbatim. Useful for research and exploratory questions.

Try AI · Semantic Search

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