Online PDF tool

Split PDF: Remove Pages from PDF, Delete Pages and Extract Pages Online

Cut a PDF into separate files, delete the pages you do not want, or pull out just the range you need, then download the result

Working with the material in the document, not just the pages? Turn the same PDF into a quiz or test with AI in seconds, free to try.

Upload or drag and drop

PDF (up to 20MB)

Single numbers and ranges both work, separated by commas. Page numbers start at 1 and follow the order of the file, not any numbering printed on the page.

To remove pages from a PDF, upload the file above, type the page numbers you want gone, for example 2, 5-7, and download the result: the pages that remain come back as one PDF in their original order. Extract mode is the mirror image, keeping only the pages you list. Split mode cuts the document into files of a fixed length and returns them as a ZIP. All three run in the browser, so nothing needs to be installed, and none of them require Adobe Acrobat.

Last updated August 2026.

Split, remove or extract: which one you want

These three jobs get described with the same words online, which is why people end up on a splitter when they wanted a page delete. The difference is only what comes back.

Mode What you type What you get back Use it when
Remove pages The pages to delete One PDF, everything except those pages A cover sheet, a blank page or a fax header is in the way
Extract pages The pages to keep One PDF, only those pages You need chapter 4 out of a 300 page manual
Split into separate files How many pages per file A ZIP of PDFs, named by page range One scan holds 30 invoices that need filing separately

Going the other way and joining files back together is a different tool: use the PDF merge tool to combine several PDFs into one document. Splitting and combining are the two halves of the same filing job, and most people who do one end up doing the other in the same afternoon.

How this compares to the other ways of deleting PDF pages

There are five realistic routes, and the browser is not always the best of them. Here is where each one actually wins.

Method Cost Strength Where it falls down
This tool Free, no account Type a whole selection at once, splits as well as deletes, works on any device with a browser 20MB limit, needs an upload, drops the bookmark outline
Adobe Acrobat Pro Paid subscription The most complete option: reorder, rotate, insert and delete visually, and it repairs the bookmark tree properly Costs money for a job most people do twice a year
Free Adobe Acrobat Reader Free Excellent viewer, and it handles commenting and form filling Cannot delete pages at all. Organize Pages belongs to paid Acrobat
Preview on macOS Free, already installed Nothing is uploaded anywhere, and dragging thumbnails to reorder is genuinely fast Mac only, no page ranges, and Apple notes that deleting a page removes its annotations too
Print to PDF in a browser Free Available on every machine, nothing leaves the device One continuous range only, and it flattens the file: bookmarks, links and form fields go

If the document is confidential under a contract or a regulator, none of the online options are the right answer, including this one. Preview, Acrobat or a command line utility keep the file on your own machine, and that is the correct default for anything covered by a duty of confidentiality.

What survives the cut, and what does not

Every browser based splitter rebuilds the document rather than editing it in place, and a rebuild is never completely lossless. Most pages that cover this topic do not say so. Here is what we measured on our own output.

Part of the file What happens Why
Page content and layout Unchanged The pages you keep are copied across as they were, in their original order
Selectable text Stays selectable Nothing is rasterised into an image, so search and copy keep working
Page numbers printed on the page Not renumbered They are part of the artwork. Cut pages 1 to 10 and the first page still reads 11
Bookmarks and the outline Removed on purpose Left alone they survive a cut and point at the wrong pages, which is worse than losing them
Links to a web address Kept and still work They point outside the document, so removing pages cannot affect them
Links to another page in the file May point at the wrong page The same re-mapping problem as bookmarks. Check a large cut before you send it on
File size Usually smaller, not proportionally Fonts and images are shared across the document, so half the pages rarely means half the bytes

The bookmark result is worth spelling out because it catches people. Take a 10 page document with a bookmark on every page and cut it to 6. The default behaviour of the rebuild engine is to carry all ten bookmarks into the new file, so Chapter 2 now jumps to whatever page happens to sit second, and the last four point at pages that no longer exist. We tested exactly that case, saw the engine warn about the dangling destinations, and chose to drop the outline instead. If your document depends on its bookmarks, edit it in Acrobat Pro, which rebuilds the outline properly.

How to remove pages from a PDF on Windows, Mac and iPhone

The right answer is different on each platform, and on one of them there is no built in answer at all.

Windows

Windows ships no way to delete a page from a PDF. The Edge viewer reads and annotates but cannot reorganise, and File Explorer has no page tools. The nearest built in workaround is the print dialog: open the file, press Ctrl and P, set the printer to Microsoft Print to PDF, type a page range, and save. That produces a new file containing only that range, which covers extract but not remove, and only for one continuous run of pages. It also flattens the document, so bookmarks, internal links and any form fields are gone. For anything more complicated the browser tool above or a desktop editor is the practical route.

macOS

Preview handles this natively and it is already installed. Open the PDF, choose View then Thumbnails or View then Contact Sheet, select the page or pages you want gone, and press Delete, or use Edit then Delete. Save afterwards. Apple documents one side effect worth knowing: deleting a page removes every annotation on that page along with it. Preview has no page range box, so selecting 40 scattered pages by hand is slow, and that is the point where typing 3, 8, 15-40 into the tool above wins.

iPhone and iPad

Open the PDF in the Files app and tap it to view. Tap the thumbnail icon in the top left corner to show the page previews, press and hold the page you want to remove, then choose Delete from the menu. It works, but one page at a time, so it suits a stray cover sheet rather than a real edit. Anything larger is easier in a browser, which is why the tool on this page is built to work the same way on a phone as on a desktop.

Linux and the command line

If you already have Ghostscript or qpdf installed, a single command does the job without uploading anything. Ghostscript takes a page list directly, and qpdf can select ranges from one or several files at once. The command line is the right tool for a repeatable job, such as stripping the same cover sheet off a folder of statements every month, and it is the fastest option once the file is too large to upload comfortably.

Why people split and trim PDFs

Splitting a batch scan

An office scanner produces one 60 page PDF holding 30 two page invoices. Splitting every 2 pages turns it into 30 files ready to be renamed and filed, which is the single most common reason people reach for a splitter.

Sending only the relevant section

A lender asks for the two pages of a report that show the figures, not the other 78. Extracting those pages is faster than explaining where to look, and it avoids handing over material nobody asked for.

Cutting cover sheets and blanks

Fax headers, blank versos and signature pages pile up in scanned archives. Removing them before the file goes into a document system keeps the archive smaller and makes it easier to read later.

Getting under an upload limit

Court portals, insurance systems and grant forms often cap uploads. Splitting a long submission into parts that each fit is usually quicker than compressing the whole thing and hoping it lands under the ceiling.

Breaking a textbook into study units

A 400 page course reader is hard to revise from. Extracting one chapter at a time gives you something you can actually work through, and it is the usual first step before turning a chapter into practice questions.

Preparing files for another tool

Plenty of services cap what they will accept by page or by size. Trimming the document down to the part that matters gets you under the limit without losing anything you needed.

That last pair is where this tool sits next to the rest of the site. Once a chapter is on its own, turning that PDF into a quiz gives you something to test yourself against, which is a far better use of an hour than reading the chapter twice.

Common questions about splitting and deleting PDF pages

Can you remove pages from a PDF in Adobe Reader?

No. The free Adobe Acrobat Reader can view, print and comment, but Organize Pages, which is where deleting lives, is part of the paid Acrobat. To delete a page without paying you need a browser tool like the one above, Preview on a Mac, or Adobe's own free online tool.

How to split a PDF into multiple files

Choose Split into separate files in the tool above, set how many pages each file should hold, then run it. A 40 page report split every 10 pages gives four PDFs. They come back as a single ZIP, named with the page range each file covers so the order is obvious.

How to remove pages from a PDF in Google Chrome

Chrome cannot delete pages, but its print dialog can rebuild a file from a page range. Open the PDF, press Ctrl or Cmd plus P, set Destination to Save as PDF, type the pages you want in the Pages box, and save. It only works for one continuous range and it drops bookmarks and form fields.

How do I extract certain pages from a PDF?

Switch the tool above to Extract pages and type the numbers you want to keep, for example 12-18. Everything else is discarded and you get one PDF containing only those pages. Extract is the mirror image of Remove: one lists what stays, the other lists what goes.

Is it safe to split a PDF online?

It depends entirely on what happens to the upload. Here the file is deleted from the server as soon as the result is built, and the result itself is deleted the moment you download it. For material under a legal or contractual confidentiality duty, a desktop tool that never leaves your machine is still the safer default.

Does removing pages from a PDF reduce the file size?

Usually, but not always in proportion. Fonts, images and colour profiles are often shared across the whole document, so cutting half the pages rarely halves the file. Deleting the pages that carry the large scanned images is what actually moves the number. If you want to see the effect, check the page count before and after with the PDF page counter.

What happens to bookmarks when you delete pages from a PDF?

They break, in every tool that rebuilds the file. We measured it: cut a 10 page document to 6 and the engine keeps all ten bookmarks, so Chapter 2 quietly points at whatever page now sits second and the last four point nowhere. This tool drops the outline instead, because a bookmark that jumps to the wrong page is worse than no bookmark.

Can you remove pages from a PDF on an iPhone?

Yes. Open the PDF in the Files app, tap it, tap the thumbnail icon at the top left to show page previews, press and hold the page you want gone, then choose Delete. For anything more than a page or two, the uploader above is quicker because you can type a whole range at once.

How do I remove pages from a password protected PDF?

You have to remove the password first. An encrypted PDF cannot be rebuilt without the key, so this tool detects encryption and stops rather than returning a broken file. Open it with the password in Acrobat or Preview, save an unprotected copy, then upload that copy here.

Do the page numbers change after I delete pages?

The internal page order renumbers itself, so the file simply has fewer pages. Any number printed on the page is part of the artwork and does not move. Cut pages 1 to 10 out of a report and the first page of the result still has 11 printed at the bottom, which surprises people more often than it should.

Before and after you split a file

Checking the page count first tells you what you are working with, and the PDF page counter reads it without opening the document. If you are trimming a file before sending it somewhere, it is worth running it through the PDF metadata remover as well, because the author name and the software that produced the document travel with the file even after you have cut the pages you did not want to share. To go the other way and join documents back together, the PDF merge tool combines several files into one. And if the reason you are cutting a chapter out is that you have to learn it, the AI quiz maker from PDF will turn that chapter into practice questions in about a minute.

Split the PDF, then do something with it

Once the chapter you need is a file of its own, it takes about a minute to turn it into a quiz, a practice test or a set of flashcards.

Turn a PDF into a quiz