PDF to SVG
Write each page as an SVG, with the text kept as real text.
This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your file is never uploaded, and you can verify that in your browser's network tab. Verify it yourself: open your browser's network tab and watch. You will see one small request asking whether you have tasks left - a tool name and a hash, never the file.
What this does
Modern PDF.js no longer has an SVG back end, and rebuilding a full PDF-to-SVG vector translator - shading patterns, clipping paths, type 3 fonts, every colour space - is not work that belongs in a browser tab. So this tool does not claim to be one. It offers the two things it genuinely can do: the page as an embedded picture with its real text positioned invisibly on top, or the text alone as true SVG text elements with none of the graphics. Neither is a vector trace of the artwork, and it is better to know that before you download forty files.
With raster on, it suits dropping a page into a web page or a design tool as one self-contained file that scales, stays sharp and can still be searched. Text only suits pulling the wording of a page into a design tool to restyle it, or building a caption layer over artwork you are drawing separately.
How it works
- Drop the PDF onto this page. Files up to 150 MB are accepted.
- Choose the mode: with raster for something that looks like the page, text only for genuinely vector text and nothing else.
- Leave Keep the text selectable on so the words stay in the file rather than being flattened into the picture.
- In raster mode, set the resolution of the embedded picture. 150 dpi is the default and is sharp at normal viewing sizes.
- Choose one file per page or a single stacked file, then press Convert to SVG.
Text only is genuinely vector and genuinely incomplete. Every character becomes an SVG text element at its measured position, so you can restyle, recolour and re-space it in any design tool. Every rule, box, logo, photograph and background on that page is gone, because there is no path data to write. That is a fine trade when the words are what you are after, and a bad surprise when they are not.
The y axis is where converters of this kind usually go wrong. SVG counts down from the top of the canvas and PDF counts up from the bottom, so every text position has to be flipped as it crosses over. Get it wrong and the page comes out mirrored vertically, or - more insidiously - each line lands one line off, so copying a word gives you the line above it.
One file per page is the default because SVG has no concept of a page. When you ask for a single file, the pages are wrapped in one root element with each translated below the last, which is the only arrangement that opens sensibly both in a browser and in a design tool.
Rendering and text extraction both happen in your browser through PDF.js, so no page of the document is drawn on anyone else's machine. The only thing that crosses the network is the allowance check, which names the tool and carries a hash of the bytes.
What this tool cannot do
- This is not a full vector translation. With raster on, the graphics are an embedded picture rather than paths; with text only, they are absent. Neither mode gives you editable vector artwork of the whole page.
- Fonts are referenced by name rather than embedded, so a machine without the typeface substitutes another and line lengths shift.
Questions people ask
- Will I get proper vector graphics I can scale?
- The text, yes - it is written as real SVG text and scales to any size. The graphics, no. Converting a page's paths, gradients, clipping and patterns is a full vector translation that this tool does not attempt, so in raster mode the artwork is an embedded picture and in text-only mode it is absent. If you need scalable artwork, the original vector source is the only reliable route.
- Which mode should I choose?
- With raster if you want the page to look like the page: an embedded image of it, with the real text positioned invisibly over the top so it can still be selected and searched. Text only if you want the words as editable vector elements and can lose every graphic.
- Can I edit the result in a design tool?
- The text can be selected, restyled and moved in Illustrator, Inkscape, Figma and anything else that reads SVG. The embedded page picture behaves like any placed image: you can move, scale and mask it, but you cannot pull it apart into shapes.
- Why is the SVG larger than the PDF?
- Because in raster mode each page carries a rendered picture inside the file, encoded as text, and the PDF stored the same page as compact drawing instructions. Lower the resolution to shrink it, or use text-only mode, which produces files of a few kilobytes since it contains nothing but characters and coordinates.
- Does the file leave my device?
- No. Pages are rendered and text is extracted in a Web Worker in your browser, and the SVG is assembled there. Nothing is uploaded, and you can verify that in the network tab: one request asks whether you have tasks left, and it carries a tool name and a hash rather than the file.