Xpdf-tools-win-4.04 ★ Quick & Free

Go forth and script your PDFs. Your future self will thank you. Have a clever use case for xpdf-tools? Let me know in the comments below. And yes, version 4.05 is out now, but 4.04 remains a rock-solid choice.

🔗 Official xpdfreader.com download page

| Tool | Time to extract all text | Memory usage | |------|------------------------|--------------| | xpdf pdftotext | 0.47 seconds | 8 MB | | Python PyPDF2 | 1.8 seconds | 45 MB | | Adobe Acrobat (Save As Text) | 6.2 seconds | 210 MB | | Microsoft Edge “Save as Text” | 2.1 seconds | 190 MB | xpdf-tools-win-4.04

When people think of PDF tools on Windows, Adobe Acrobat, Foxit Reader, or modern Electron-based apps come to mind. But beneath the glossy GUI surface lies a rugged, lightweight, and incredibly fast alternative: xpdf-tools-win-4.04 .

Get-ChildItem -Filter "*.pdf" | ForEach-Object $output = "$($_.BaseName).txt" pdftotext $_.FullName $output Write-Host "Processed $($_.Name)" Go forth and script your PDFs

The 4.04 release is stable, well-tested, and free (under the GPLv2). It doesn’t phone home, doesn’t display ads, and doesn’t mysteriously expire. It just works – even on Windows 11, Windows Server 2022, and Windows 10 LTSC.

For batch processing images at high DPI: Let me know in the comments below

pdftotext -v You should see “xpdf-tools version 4.04”. No admin rights are required if you run from the extracted folder directly. Let’s explore real-world use cases. Assume you have a PDF called report.pdf . Text Extraction (pdftotext) pdftotext report.pdf output.txt Preserves layout roughly (use -layout for better column retention). For raw text without formatting, just omit the flag.