PDF Tools
Split PDF
Split a PDF by page range, at fixed intervals, or into individual pages: all locally in your browser.
Overview
Why use a free PDF splitter?
This free PDF splitter breaks one document into the parts you actually need. Open a file and you see its pages as thumbnails: click the ones you want and download them as a new PDF, cut the document into fixed-size chunks, or burst it so every page becomes its own file.
The page thumbnails matter more than they sound. Splitting by typing page numbers assumes you already know what is on page 14, which is precisely what someone facing a forty-page scan does not know. Seeing the pages turns it into a job you can do by looking, and the page box is still there for long documents where typing 1-20 beats twenty clicks.
Nothing is uploaded. The file is opened, rendered and split inside your browser, which is the difference that decides whether this is usable for a bank statement, a signed contract or a medical letter. There is no server copy to be retained, indexed or breached, because the document never leaves your device.
Pages are copied rather than redrawn, so text in the output stays selectable and searchable and vector graphics stay sharp. No signup, no watermark, and no cap on the number of pages beyond what your own device can hold in memory.
Step by step
How to split a PDF into separate files
Open your PDF
Choose the file you want to split. Its pages appear as thumbnails so you can see what is on each one.
Choose what you need
Click the pages you want, or switch to splitting every N pages or into single pages. You can also type ranges like 1-3, 5, 8- directly.
Download the result
Save each file on its own, or take the whole set as a single zip.
What you get
- Visual page picker: see the pages before you choose
- Split by custom page ranges
- Split every N pages
- Burst into single-page files
- Download separately or as one zip
- Runs entirely in your browser, no uploads
Background
What happens when you split a PDF?
Splitting creates new documents; it never edits the one you started with. Each page you select is copied (its text, fonts, images and drawing instructions) into a fresh file with its own index. Your original stays exactly as it was on disk, which is why splitting is safe to experiment with in a way that editing is not.
Because it copies rather than re-renders, quality is unchanged. Tools that split by rasterising each page into an image produce files where text can no longer be selected or searched and small print goes soft; that is a shortcut, not a necessity. If a split file comes back blurry or unsearchable, that is what happened to it.
One consequence surprises almost everyone: the parts can add up to more than the original. A page's fonts and images are stored once in the document and referenced by every page that uses them, so when pages are separated, each new file needs its own copy of the resources its pages depend on. Splitting a report into ten parts can duplicate the same embedded font ten times. The pages are identical; the packaging is not.
What does not carry across is anything the document holds as a whole rather than per page. The bookmark outline is the main one: it belongs to the document, so split parts start without it. Internal links pointing at pages that ended up in a different file no longer have a target, form fields defined at document level may not survive, and a digital signature is invalidated, correctly, because the file it signed no longer exists in that form.
Not to be confused with
- Extracting pages
- Usually the same operation under a different name: you want certain pages out as a new file. The distinction some software draws is whether the pages are also deleted from the source. Here they never are. You get new files and keep your original, so extracting and splitting are one job.
- Deleting pages
- The mirror image. Removing three pages from a fifty-page document is faster expressed as keeping the other forty-seven, which the page box does directly: type 1-20, 24- to drop pages 21 to 23. The output is your document minus those pages.
- Merging PDFs
- The inverse, and often the next step. Splitting a scanned batch into individual documents and then recombining the pages that belong together is one of the most common workflows there is, which is why the two tools accept the same page-range syntax.
- Redacting a PDF
- Not the same thing, and the difference matters. Splitting off pages you do not want genuinely leaves their content behind: it is not copied. But redaction means removing sensitive content from a page you are keeping, and no split can do that. Drawing a black box over text in an editor does not remove it either; only a real redaction tool does.
- Compressing a PDF
- Splitting is often reached for to get under an email limit, and it does produce smaller files, but each part still carries its own copy of the fonts and images its pages use, so ten parts are not a tenth of the size. If size is the real goal, compress first and split only if you still need to.
- Printing a page range
- Printing pages 4 to 6 to a PDF gets you a similar-looking file, but it goes through the print pipeline: page sizes are normalised to the print settings, and depending on the driver, text may be re-rendered or flattened. Splitting keeps each page exactly as it was, including mixed sizes and orientations.
Reference
What to check before you split
Splitting is quick and non-destructive, so the risk is not losing your document. It is producing files that are wrong in a way you notice a week later. These are the things worth a look first, in roughly the order they cause trouble.
Which pages you actually want
The thumbnails are there so you can confirm this by looking rather than by memory. Click the pages you want, or type them: 1-3, 5, 8- and open-ended forms like -4 all work. The order you type is the order they appear, so 3,1 puts page three first.
Required
The right mode for the job
Picking pages produces one file from the pages you chose. Every N pages cuts the document into equal chunks, which suits a batch where each document is the same length. Every page bursts it into single-page files. Choosing the wrong one is the difference between one file and eighty.
Required
Where each document actually ends
Fixed-size chunks only work if the documents really are a fixed length. A scanned stack of two-page invoices with one three-page invoice in it will split wrongly from that point onward, and the thumbnails are the fastest way to catch it before you download eighty files.
Required
Printed page numbers
Numbers printed on the page are part of the page image and do not change. Page 5 of the original becomes page 1 of its new file but still reads "5", and any contents page or cross-reference still points at the original numbering. Expected, but confusing to a recipient who was not told.
Optional
The bookmark outline
Bookmarks are stored for the document as a whole, so split parts start without them. For a long part, a recipient will navigate by scrolling. If bookmarks are how people find their way around your document, plan to rebuild them in an editor.
Optional
Internal links and cross-references
A link pointing to a page that ended up in another file has nothing to point at. Table-of-contents links are the common case: split a report and the contents page becomes decorative. Links to external websites are unaffected.
Optional
Digital signatures
A signature covers the exact document it was applied to, so any split invalidates it. That is the point of a signature, not a defect. If a signed page has to stay verifiable, send the signed file whole alongside whatever you split out of a copy.
Optional
Form fields
Interactive fields are defined at document level and may not survive being separated from the document that declared them. If the filled-in values matter more than the ability to edit them, flatten the form before splitting.
Optional
Document metadata
Title, author and creation date belong to the file, not the page, and can carry into the parts. Worth checking when you are splitting one section out of an internal document to send outside the organisation.
Optional
How many files you are about to produce
Bursting a 200-page document produces 200 files. Download them as a single zip rather than individually: browsers throttle repeated downloads, and a folder of 200 loose PDFs is its own filing problem.
Optional
What each file will be called
Outputs are named after the source with the page numbers appended, zero-padded so they sort correctly. That is a reasonable default and a poor final answer: rename them for whoever receives them before sending.
Optional
Whether the file opens at all
A PDF that needs a password to view cannot be opened or split, and you will be told rather than left with a silent failure. Files with owner restrictions (printing or editing limits) usually open normally.
Optional
Who it helps
Who needs to separate PDF pages?
Anyone sharing one page of a longer document
A single page of a bank statement for a rental application, one certificate from a bundle, one clause from a contract. Sending the whole document because extracting a page seemed like work is how far more information gets disclosed than anyone intended.
Freelancers and small businesses
Accounting software exports a year of invoices as one PDF, and a client needs the three that concern them. Picking those pages takes seconds, and the client receives what they asked for rather than a document listing every other customer you billed.
Anyone digitising paper
A document feeder produces one file per batch, not per document. Splitting turns a fifty-page scan back into the twelve documents it actually contains: fixed intervals when they are a uniform length, the visual picker when they are not.
Bookkeepers and accountants
Receipts arrive as one long scan and have to be filed one transaction at a time. Bursting the file into single pages and downloading them as a zip gives you one file per receipt, ready to attach to the entries they belong to.
Legal and professional services
Bundles are assembled from parts of many documents, and disclosure means sending precisely the pages that are in scope and no others. Confirming the selection visually before it leaves the building is a meaningful control, not a convenience.
Teachers and students
One chapter out of a scanned book of readings, one question set out of a paper, one section of a thesis for a supervisor. The parts keep the original's typesetting exactly, which matters for anything with equations, figures or musical notation.
Anyone up against an email size limit
Mail systems commonly reject attachments over 10 to 25MB. Splitting a large document into parts that fit is a practical way through, bearing in mind that the parts do not divide evenly by size, because each one carries its own copy of whatever its pages share with the rest.
Do it properly
Best practices
Look at the pages before you choose them
The thumbnails exist so the selection is a decision rather than a guess. Confirming that page 14 is the page you meant takes a second and prevents the failure this tool is most often used to fix: sending the wrong page of the right document.
Use the visual picker for uneven documents, ranges for long ones
Clicking pages suits a scan whose documents are different lengths, where only your eyes can tell where one ends. Typing 1-40 is faster than forty clicks. Clicking a page fills in the page box, so you can start visually and finish by typing.
Check where the split actually falls before downloading everything
With fixed-size chunks, one document of an unexpected length shifts every split after it. Confirming the boundaries against the thumbnails first is far quicker than sorting out eighty misaligned files afterwards.
Take the zip when there is more than a handful
Browsers throttle or block repeated automatic downloads, so a burst of forty separate files may arrive incomplete without any error. One archive always arrives whole, and it keeps the set together on the way to wherever it is going.
Rename the parts before you send them
Automatic names describe where a page came from, not what it is. A recipient reading statement-page-07.pdf learns nothing; march-statement.pdf tells them what they have. Rename before sending, not after they ask.
Tell recipients the page numbers will not match
The numbers printed on the pages are the original's. A single line ("pages 12 to 14 of the annual report") saves the recipient wondering whether they were sent a fragment of something or are missing the first eleven pages.
Keep the original until the parts are checked
Splitting does not touch your source file, so there is no reason to delete it early. Open the parts, confirm the page counts, then archive the original. A page dropped by a mistyped range is only recoverable while you still have it.
Split from a copy when signatures are involved
Splitting invalidates a digital signature because the signed document has changed. Send the signed file intact alongside whatever you needed to extract, rather than sending a part and expecting the signature to still verify.
Avoid these
Common mistakes
Uploading a confidential document to an online splitter
Statements, contracts, medical letters and identity documents are exactly the files that should not reach an unknown server, and splitting them is one of the most common reasons people upload one. Use a tool that works locally, or desktop software.
Sending the whole document because extracting one page looked like work
Over-disclosure is the most expensive mistake on this page, and it is entirely avoidable. Picking one page takes about as long as attaching the file did, and the recipient gets what they asked for instead of everything else you had.
Splitting every N pages without checking the documents are that length
Verify the boundaries against the thumbnails first. A single odd-length document shifts every subsequent split, and the result is a folder of files that each begin and end in the wrong place, usually noticed only after they have been filed.
Expecting the printed page numbers to renumber themselves
They are part of the page and stay as they were. Say which pages of what the extract came from when you send it, and do not rely on a contents page in a split part: its links point at pages that are now in another file.
Assuming ten parts will each be a tenth of the size
Each part carries its own copy of whatever its pages share with the rest of the document, so a text-heavy report split into ten can easily total several times the original. Scans behave better, since each page's image belongs to that page alone. If a size limit is the goal, compress first and split only if it is still too big.
Splitting a page off to hide what is on it
That works only for whole pages you exclude: their content is genuinely not copied. Sensitive text on a page you are keeping needs proper redaction, which removes the underlying content; a black rectangle drawn over it in an editor leaves the text selectable underneath.
Downloading dozens of files one at a time
Use the zip. Beyond a handful, browsers begin throttling or silently blocking automatic downloads, so files can go missing with no visible error, and a partially downloaded burst is worse than an obvious failure because it looks finished.
Relying on bookmarks to survive the split
The outline belongs to the document, so parts start without one. For a long part where navigation matters, rebuild the bookmarks in a PDF editor or keep the complete document available alongside the extract.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
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