Drop a PDF below and the word count appears straight away. The file is read inside your browser and never leaves your device, which matters if the document is confidential. Adobe Acrobat has no word counter, which is why this question comes up so often.
Drop a PDF below
Drop a PDF here or
Nothing is uploaded. The file is read inside your browser and never leaves your device.
Acrobat has no word count feature. Adobe's own advice is to convert the PDF to a Word document and count it there, which is a strange answer to a question people ask constantly — translators, students and editors all need it.
The reason is that a PDF does not store sentences. It stores glyphs with coordinates. Getting a word count means re-assembling text from positions on a page, which is exactly what happens above.
| Type of PDF | Works? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Exported from Word, Google Docs, LaTeX | Yes | Real text layer inside the file |
| Saved from a web page | Yes | Same |
| Scanned pages or photographs | No | They are images — there is no text to read |
| Scanned then run through OCR | Yes | OCR adds a text layer |
| Password protected | No | Remove the password first |
If the count comes back as zero on a document you can clearly read, it is almost certainly a scan. Run it through an OCR tool first, then count it here.
Translators are usually paid per source word, editors per thousand words, and transcribers per audio minute. Three things trip people up when quoting from a PDF:
For a quote, count the file, then subtract an allowance for repeated headers. For anything critical, check the extracted text in the box above rather than trusting the number alone.
How do I count words in a PDF? Drop the PDF into the box on this page. The text is extracted inside your browser and counted straight away. Nothing is uploaded.
Does Adobe Acrobat have a word counter? No. Adobe's own guidance is to convert the PDF to a Word document and use Word's counter instead.
Why does my PDF show zero words? It is almost certainly a scan or a photograph, so there is no text layer to read. Run it through an OCR tool first, then count the result.
Is my PDF uploaded to a server? No. The file is read by JavaScript inside your browser and never leaves your device, which matters if the document is confidential.
Does it count headers and page numbers? Yes, because they are part of the text. On a long report, subtract an allowance for repeated headers before quoting a price.