How long does it actually take?

For most operations, well under a second per page. Anything involving re-rendering pages — compression and image conversion — is slower, in the region of a few tenths of a second per page on a modern laptop. Long documents show live progress so you always know where you are.

Why is it faster than other online tools?

Because it skips the upload, the queue and the download of the result. Those three stages usually account for most of the wall-clock time on a conventional online tool, and none of them exist here.

Does a slow internet connection make it slower?

Only for loading the page itself. Once the tool is open, processing happens on your device and your connection speed is irrelevant to how long the job takes.

How do I write a page range?

Use commas between entries and hyphens inside a range, like 1-3, 7, 9-12. Spaces are ignored. Pages come out in the order you list them, and a page listed twice only appears once.

What happens if I ask for a page that does not exist?

You get a clear message naming the page and telling you how many pages the document actually has, before any processing starts. Nothing is downloaded and nothing is lost.

Does splitting change the pages themselves?

No. Each output page is copied from the original at the object level, so text, fonts, images and page dimensions are exactly as they were.

Can I download all the split files at once?

Yes. The results view has a download-all button that saves every file in turn. Your browser may ask once for permission to download multiple files — allow it and the rest follow automatically.

Is the original file changed?

Never. The tool reads the file you select and builds new documents from it. The file on your device is exactly as it was when you started.

Fast Split PDF

Break one PDF into separate files, or pull out just the pages you need.

Drop your PDF file here

or browse your device

A single PDF file, up to 100 MB. Files are processed on this device.

On most online PDF tools, the actual work takes a second or two. Everything else is transport: uploading your file, waiting in a queue, and downloading the result. On a typical home connection, a 20 MB document can spend half a minute in transit before anything happens to it.

This tool removes that entirely. Your file is read straight from your device into the browser tab, processed there, and handed back as a download. There is no upload, no queue and no return trip, so the only time spent is the processing itself.

The practical difference grows with file size and shrinks with connection quality. On fibre with a small file you might not notice. On a mobile connection with a large scanned document, the difference is the difference between a few seconds and a few minutes.

Splitting a PDF means one of two quite different things depending on the day. Sometimes you want every page as its own file — useful when a scanner has handed you a fifty-page batch that is really fifty separate documents. Other times you want to pull out pages seven through twelve and nothing else. This tool does both.

Choose one PDF per page and you get a numbered set of single-page files, each named after the original. Choose a page range and you get one new PDF containing exactly the pages you listed, in the order you listed them. Either way the original file on your device is left completely untouched.

How to split a PDF file

Add your PDF
Drop a single PDF onto the upload area, or press it to browse your device.
Choose how to split
Pick one PDF per page to burst the whole document, or extract a page range to pull out a specific section.
Enter the pages you want
If you chose to extract a range, type it as a list — 1-3, 7, 9-12. Page numbers start at 1 and each page appears only once in the output.
Split the file
Press Split PDF. Progress is shown page by page for long documents.
Download the pieces
A single extracted range downloads as one file. A full burst gives you a list where you can grab pages individually or download the whole set.

Why use this split pdf tool

No upload wait

Files are read directly from your device. There is no transfer step before processing can begin.

No queue

Nothing is waiting for a server worker to become free. The work starts the moment you press the button.

Connection-independent

After the page loads, your connection speed no longer affects how long the job takes.

Two modes, one tool

Burst a document into single pages, or extract a specific range into one new file, without switching to a different page.

Readable page ranges

Write ranges the way you would say them out loud — 1-3, 7, 9-12 — and the tool validates them against the real page count before it does anything.

Predictable filenames

Output files are named after the source document with the page number appended, so a folder full of them still makes sense a month later.

Features

Page-by-page burstTurn an N-page PDF into N separate single-page PDFs.
Range extractionPull out any combination of pages and ranges into one new document.
Range validationImpossible ranges are reported before processing rather than failing halfway.
Cancel any timeLong documents show live progress and can be stopped mid-run.
Original untouchedThe file you selected is only ever read, never modified.

When people use this

Separating a scan batch

A stack fed through a document feeder often comes back as one PDF containing many unrelated documents. Burst it into pages, then keep only what you need.

Sending one chapter

Extract pages 42 to 58 of a long report so a colleague receives only the section that concerns them rather than the whole thing.

Removing pages before sharing

Extract everything except the pages you would rather not circulate, and share the new file instead of the original.

Preparing pages for signature

Pull the signature page out on its own, sign it, and merge it back into the document afterwards.

Where the time actually goes

A conventional online tool spends its time in four stages: uploading your file, waiting for a worker to pick it up, processing, then downloading the result. On a 10 Mbps upstream connection — typical for home broadband — a 25 MB file takes about twenty seconds just to reach the server, and the same again is spent in reverse if the output is a similar size.

Running locally cuts three of those four stages. Reading a file from your own disk into a browser tab happens at hundreds of megabytes per second, which is effectively instant at these sizes. What remains is the processing, which for most operations is a fraction of a second per page.

This is also why the tool behaves the same on a poor connection. Once the page has loaded, network speed stops being a factor — a job on tethered mobile data runs at exactly the same speed as one on a wired connection.

How splitting works

The source PDF is parsed once with pdf-lib and its page count is read. For a burst, the tool creates a fresh single-page document for each page index and copies that one page into it. For a range extraction, it creates a single document and copies the pages you listed into it in that order.

Because pages are copied as objects rather than re-rendered, the output is byte-for-byte faithful to the input in terms of content. A page that was 2 MB of scanned image in the original is still that image in the split file — splitting is not a compression step, and a 50-page document split into 50 files will add up to roughly the size of the original plus a small amount of per-file structural overhead.

Privacy

Your files are not uploaded. When you add a PDF file, your browser reads it from your device into the memory of the tab you are looking at, and the split pdf operation runs there using your own processor. Nothing is transmitted to any server at any point.

That means there is no file for anyone to store, no retention policy to trust, and no deletion schedule to take on faith. The document exists only in the memory of an open browser tab, and it is released the moment you close it, reload the page, or press start over.

The site uses standard anonymous analytics to count page views and how often each tool is used. Those events record which tool ran and whether it succeeded — never a file name, never file contents, and never anything that could identify a document or the person processing it.

No account is required, so no personal information is collected. There is no profile, no history and nothing tied to an identity, because no identity was ever created.

Security

The strongest security property this tool has is structural: your file never travels anywhere, so there is no transmission to intercept and no server-side copy to breach. This is not a policy that could change — it is a consequence of where the code runs.

You can verify it in about thirty seconds. Open your browser's developer tools with F12, select the Network tab, and use the tool. You will see the page's scripts load — including the PDF libraries, which are fetched on demand the first time a tool runs — and then nothing further. No request carrying your document is ever made.

For a stronger test, disconnect from the network once the page has loaded. The tool will keep working exactly as before, which is only possible because nothing is being sent.

Uploaded files are validated in the browser before anything runs: the extension must match what the tool accepts, the file must not be empty, and it must be within the size limit. Malformed documents produce a clear error and a retry option rather than a silent failure.

What this tool does not do

Being clear about limits is more useful than a feature list that quietly omits them. Splitting does not reduce file size, and document-level features such as bookmarks and form fields are not carried into the individual pieces.

If you need capabilities beyond that — redaction, PDF/A conformance, OCR, or scripted batch processing across thousands of documents — dedicated desktop software genuinely earns its licence fee, and this is not trying to replace it. For the specific job of producing a split PDF files, everything you need is on this page.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it actually take?: For most operations, well under a second per page. Anything involving re-rendering pages — compression and image conversion — is slower, in the region of a few tenths of a second per page on a modern laptop. Long documents show live progress so you always know where you are.
Why is it faster than other online tools?: Because it skips the upload, the queue and the download of the result. Those three stages usually account for most of the wall-clock time on a conventional online tool, and none of them exist here.
Does a slow internet connection make it slower?: Only for loading the page itself. Once the tool is open, processing happens on your device and your connection speed is irrelevant to how long the job takes.
How do I write a page range?: Use commas between entries and hyphens inside a range, like 1-3, 7, 9-12. Spaces are ignored. Pages come out in the order you list them, and a page listed twice only appears once.
What happens if I ask for a page that does not exist?: You get a clear message naming the page and telling you how many pages the document actually has, before any processing starts. Nothing is downloaded and nothing is lost.
Does splitting change the pages themselves?: No. Each output page is copied from the original at the object level, so text, fonts, images and page dimensions are exactly as they were.
Can I download all the split files at once?: Yes. The results view has a download-all button that saves every file in turn. Your browser may ask once for permission to download multiple files — allow it and the rest follow automatically.
Is the original file changed?: Never. The tool reads the file you select and builds new documents from it. The file on your device is exactly as it was when you started.

Browse every PDF tool, or read the help and FAQ pages. Details of how files are handled are in the privacy policy.