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PDF-to-Text API - Frequently Asked Questions


🌍 Question: Can I extract text from a PDF file that contains languages other than English?

Yes, our PDF-to-Text API supports 50+ languages including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, Arabic, and many more.

Even if your language is not explicitly listed above, it's very likely that it is supported as well. Just call the API with a trial account to find out. It's free! Seeing is believing.


📏 Question: I want to extract text from a large PDF file. Is there a limit on the size of the PDF document?

Yes, there are different limits depending on which API endpoint you use:

Synchronous API: PDF documents up to 1 MB and 10 pages long. Perfect for quick conversions with immediate results.

Asynchronous API: PDF documents up to 30 MB in size and 300 pages long. Ideal for batch processing and large documents.


🆓 Question: I am calling the API with a free trial account. It's giving me this "Free Quota Exceeded" error. Why?

The free trial account is designed for testing and learning purposes only. It allows 20 free PDF conversions total.

Trial Account: 20 conversions total (free)
Premium Account: 60 conversions per hour (1,440 per day)

To use the API seriously, you need to subscribe to a Premium plan. Plans start at just $5.99/month (with annual billing). You'll receive your Client ID and Secret instantly!


🔄 Question: My premium account has expired. What should I do?

No worries! Renewing is simple and keeps your existing Client ID.

Just subscribe to one of the plans with your existing Client ID (the email you used originally). Your account will be renewed instantly and your existing code will continue working without any changes!


💡 Question: What are the most common use cases for the PDF-to-Text API?

Our customers use the PDF-to-Text API for:

  • Document Archiving: Convert PDF documents to searchable text for long-term storage and retrieval.
  • Content Indexing: Extract text for search engine indexing and full-text search capabilities.
  • Data Analysis: Process PDF reports and documents for automated data extraction and analysis.
  • E-discovery: Extract text from legal documents for case preparation and review.
  • Accessibility: Convert PDF content to formats suitable for screen readers and assistive technologies.

✅ Question: How accurate is the text extraction?

The PDF-to-Text API provides high-quality text extraction for standard PDF documents with selectable text. Accuracy is typically 95%+ for well-formatted documents.

For scanned PDFs (image-based), the API may not extract text accurately as it requires OCR (Optical Character Recognition). We recommend using OCR preprocessing for scanned documents.


💬 Question: Need more help?

We're here to help you succeed! Contact us or check out the Getting Started Guide for sample code in 9 programming languages.