Remove a password from a PDF
Take the password off a PDF you can already open, free and with no account. You supply the password; nothing is uploaded and nothing is guessed.
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How it works
An encrypted PDF stores an encryption dictionary describing the cipher and a check value derived from your password. A cipher transform is built from that dictionary and the password you typed, and every object stream is re-parsed through it. Decrypting alone is not enough, though: the parsed file still carries its original trailer, which names the encryption dictionary, so a straight re-save produces plaintext that every reader still refuses to open. The pages are therefore copied into a fresh document, which sheds that trailer along with the rest of the encrypted file's bookkeeping.
What to watch out for
This tool decrypts with exactly the string you type and nothing else. There is no list of common passwords, no dictionary and no retry loop, so a document whose password you do not know stays closed. That is a deliberate limit, not an oversight.
PDFs can carry two. The user password is required to open the file at all; the owner password only guards permission settings and many readers never ask for it. If your file opens without prompting but refuses to print, it has an owner password and no user password.
What you get back has no encryption dictionary, so anyone who receives it can open it. That is the point, and it is worth remembering before sending the unlocked copy on. Keep the protected original if the protection still matters to someone.
Shedding the encryption means rebuilding the document from its pages, which carries the visible content and its annotations but leaves behind the outline, any interactive form and the title and author fields. Measured, not assumed. For a long report with a table of contents that is a real loss worth knowing about first.
Limits
Files up to about 100 MB work reliably. Beyond that, the ceiling is your device's memory rather than any rule we impose — the work happens on your own machine. Tested in Chrome 140, Firefox 143, Safari 18.
What this tool is, and what it is not
It removes a password from a PDF when you supply that password. The everyday case is your own document — a bank statement, a payslip, an exam paper, a scan from an office that protects everything by policy — which you are tired of unlocking every time you open it.
It is not a password recovery tool. It makes no attempt to guess, no attempt to try common passwords, and no attempt to work around the encryption. A file whose password you do not have will not open here, and no setting will change that.
That limit is written into the code, not just into this paragraph: the tool decrypts once, with the exact string you typed, and reports failure if that string is wrong.
Why a wrong password looks like a broken file
Encryption in a PDF is not a flag on the outside. The object streams that make up the document are themselves scrambled, and the password is what derives the key to unscramble them.
Feed in the wrong password and the reader does not get “access denied” — it gets bytes that decode into nonsense, and reports a parsing failure. Most tools pass that failure straight through, which is why so many of them tell you your file is damaged when the only thing wrong was a mistyped capital letter.
This tool knows a password was supplied, so it reports the honest cause instead.
The two passwords a PDF can carry
Almost nobody expects this, and it explains a great deal of confusion.
A user password is required to open the document at all. Without it the contents cannot be decrypted by anybody.
An owner password guards the permission settings — printing, copying, editing — while leaving the file readable by anyone. If your PDF opens with no prompt but refuses to let you print or select text, it has an owner password only. Readers are supposed to honour those restrictions and many simply do not.
Nothing is uploaded, and that matters more here
Passwords and protected documents are exactly the combination nobody should be handing to a stranger’s server. The decryption happens in a Web Worker inside your browser: the file is never transmitted, and the password you type is never sent anywhere, stored, or logged. Close the tab and both are gone.
You can check that claim rather than take it on faith — open your browser’s Network tab and watch while the tool runs.
Your files never leave your browser. Last updated 2026-08-02.
Next step
Your file is already here in this browser, so the next tool starts with it loaded.