Tool · Search inside PDF · Beta
Find anything in your PDF.
Instantly. Privately.
Drop a PDF, type the words you're looking for, and get the matching passages with page numbers. No upload, no AI, no download. Your file never leaves this tab.
Processed in your browser
Common questions
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from Ctrl+F?
It searches the extracted text of the whole document and ranks passages, then jumps you to the page a result came from — useful when you know roughly what was said but not the exact wording. Ctrl+F needs the literal string; this does not.
Does it work on scanned documents?
Only if the pages carry a text layer. A scan is an image until it has been through OCR, so run Make Searchable first and the search will then find text on those pages.
Does search upload my PDF to a server?
No. The file is opened, processed and saved back by code running in this browser tab — there is no upload endpoint on our servers to send it to. You can watch the Network panel in your browser's developer tools while you work and confirm nothing carrying the document leaves the page.
Is Search inside PDF free?
Search inside PDF is free with a free account: up to 3 downloads a day, and a small PDFMacro line on each page of a saved PDF. Pro removes both. There are no page or file-size caps on either plan. No AI and no model download are involved.
Does it work offline?
With Pro, yes. Once the page has loaded, every tool keeps working with the network disconnected, because the processing never depended on a server round-trip; OCR's language packs need one download the first time. A free account needs a connection to save, for its daily count. AI features need your AI: your provider online, or your local model running.
Search Inside PDF runs in your browser. Try it now.
Your file is never uploaded. Work on it right away; a free account saves it. Open a file and see for yourself — the network panel is right there if you want to check.