How to count characters in a PDF
Upload your PDF by dragging it into the box above, or click the upload area and choose a PDF file from your device.
Once your file is selected, you will see a confirmation message letting you know the PDF has been added successfully.
Click the green "Count Characters" button and the tool will scan the readable text inside your PDF. The total number of characters will then appear above.
To check another file, simply upload a different PDF and run the counter again.
What does this PDF Character Counter count?
This tool counts the characters found in the extracted text of your PDF. That includes letters, numbers, punctuation marks, symbols and spaces that are readable in the file.
Character counts are useful when you need to meet a writing limit, estimate document length, prepare content for a form, or check the size of text before copying it somewhere else.
Why character count matters
Word count is helpful, but sometimes it does not tell the whole story. Many platforms, applications and forms use character limits instead of word limits.
For example, social media posts, meta descriptions, SMS messages, online applications and short text fields often care more about characters than words.
If your content is saved as a PDF, copying and pasting everything into a separate text editor can be annoying. This tool gives you a faster way to check the length of the readable text in your PDF.
No software download required
You do not need Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Word or any other document editor to use this PDF Character Counter.
The tool runs in your browser, so you can use it on a desktop computer, laptop, tablet or mobile device.
Your PDF stays private
Your uploaded PDF is processed locally in your browser using JavaScript, the FileReader API and the pdf.js library.
That means the text is extracted on your own device. The contents of your PDF are not uploaded to our server, stored by us or saved for later.
Fast and simple PDF text analysis
Manually counting characters in a document is slow and easy to get wrong. Even copying text from a PDF can sometimes be frustrating, especially if the file has multiple pages.
Our PDF Character Counter helps you get a quick estimate in just a few clicks. Upload the file, press the button and view the result.
What is a PDF?
PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It is a common file format used for sharing documents while preserving layout, fonts and formatting across different devices.
PDF files are often used for books, forms, reports, contracts, resumes, school papers and business documents.
Important note about scanned PDFs
This tool works best with PDFs that contain selectable, readable text.
If your PDF is a scanned image, photo or document without embedded text, the counter may not be able to read the characters unless the PDF has already gone through OCR text recognition.
Thanks for using our PDF Character Counter!
We hope this tool made it easy to find the character count of your PDF. If you have any questions, you can contact us.
If you want to count characters in regular text, try our main character counter. If you need a word-based tool instead, you can also use our word counter.