June 26, 2026
You have a PDF with 50 pages and you only need pages 12 through 18. Or you need to send one section of a report to a client without sharing the rest. Or you received a single PDF with multiple invoices and need each one as its own file.
Splitting a PDF solves all of these. This guide covers six ways to split PDF files, from free built-in tools to bulk processing options.
Adobe Acrobat is the most full-featured option for splitting PDFs. It handles single splits, batch processing, and custom page ranges.
Open Adobe Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader, which does not support splitting). Go to File > Open and select your PDF.
Click Tools in the top menu, then select Organize Pages. You will see thumbnail previews of every page in the document.
Click the Split button in the toolbar. Acrobat gives you three options: split by number of pages, by file size, or by top-level bookmarks. For most cases, choose "Number of pages" and set it to 1 to get each page as its own file.
Click Output Options to choose where the split files are saved and how they are named. Click Split. Acrobat creates the individual PDF files in your chosen folder.
Acrobat requires a paid subscription ($22.99/month for Acrobat Pro). If you only need to split PDFs occasionally, the free methods below work just as well.
Preview is built into every Mac and can split PDFs without installing anything.
Double-click the PDF file to open it in Preview. If it opens in a different app, right-click the file and choose Open With > Preview.
Go to View > Thumbnails to show page thumbnails in the sidebar. Each thumbnail represents one page.
Click the thumbnail of the page you want to separate. Hold Command to select multiple pages. Drag the selected thumbnails from the sidebar to your desktop or a Finder folder. Preview saves each selection as a new PDF file.
You can also use File > Print, select specific page ranges, and choose "Save as PDF" from the PDF dropdown to create a new file with only those pages.
Online PDF splitters work in any browser with no software to install. These are the most reliable free options.
Go to ilovepdf.com/split_pdf. Upload your file, choose to split by range or extract specific pages, and click Split PDF. Download the results as individual files or a ZIP archive. Free for files up to 100 MB.
Go to smallpdf.com/split-pdf. Upload your PDF, click on the pages you want to extract, and click Split. SmallPDF gives you two free tasks per day before requiring a subscription.
Go to pdf2go.com/split-pdf. Upload your file, select how you want to split (all pages, specific ranges, or by size), and click Save. No account required for basic splits.
Online tools are the fastest option for occasional use. Keep in mind that you are uploading your document to a third-party server. For confidential documents like financial statements, contracts, or medical records, use an offline method instead.
Chrome has a built-in PDF viewer that can split pages using the print dialog. No extensions needed.
Drag the PDF file into a Chrome browser window, or right-click the file and choose Open With > Google Chrome.
Press Ctrl+P on Windows or Command+P on Mac to open the print dialog.
Under Pages, select Custom and type the page numbers or range you want. For example, type "3-7" to extract pages 3 through 7, or "1, 4, 9" to extract specific pages.
Change the Destination to "Save as PDF" and click Save. Chrome creates a new PDF containing only the pages you selected.
Repeat for each section you need. This method is free, works on any operating system, and keeps your files local.
For developers or anyone comfortable with the terminal, command-line tools handle bulk splitting without a GUI.
Install pdftk (PDF Toolkit) and run a single command to split pages. To extract pages 5 through 10 from a file:
pdftk input.pdf cat 5-10 output pages5to10.pdf
To split every page into its own file:
pdftk input.pdf burst output page_%02d.pdf
qpdf is another free command-line tool. To extract a page range:
qpdf input.pdf --pages . 1-5 -- output.pdf
Both tools are free, open source, and available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. They are ideal for scripting and batch processing large numbers of PDFs.
Splitting a PDF gives you smaller PDFs. But in many cases, what you actually need is the data inside the PDF, not a smaller PDF file.
If you are splitting a bank statement to isolate specific transactions, splitting gives you a page with an image of a table. You still have to type the data into a spreadsheet manually. If you are splitting a multi-invoice PDF to process each invoice separately, you still need to extract vendor names, amounts, and line items from each one.
In these cases, Lido skips the splitting step entirely. Upload the full PDF and Lido extracts the structured data from every page into labeled rows and columns. It works on bank statements, invoices, receipts, tax forms, and any other document with tabular data. No splitting, no retyping, no reformatting.
| Situation | Best method |
|---|---|
| Quick one-off split, no software | Google Chrome print dialog |
| Mac user, occasional splits | Preview (drag pages out) |
| Free online, any device | ILovePDF or SmallPDF |
| Advanced splits, batch processing | Adobe Acrobat Pro |
| Scripting and automation | pdftk or qpdf (command line) |
| Need the data, not a smaller PDF | Lido (extract to spreadsheet) |
For most people, the Chrome print method or an online tool is the fastest way to split PDF pages. If you need to extract data from the pages rather than just separate them, Lido offers 50 free pages to test on your own documents.
Open the PDF in any tool that supports page management, such as Adobe Acrobat, Preview on Mac, or Google Chrome. Select the pages you want, then save or export them as a new PDF. Online tools like ILovePDF also let you split PDFs in your browser for free.
Go to ilovepdf.com/split_pdf or smallpdf.com/split-pdf. Upload your PDF, choose which pages to separate, and download the results. No software installation or account required for basic splits.
Use Google Chrome's print dialog (Ctrl+P, set a custom page range, save as PDF), Preview on Mac (drag page thumbnails to the desktop), or a free online tool like ILovePDF. All of these split PDFs without any paid software.
Yes. In Adobe Acrobat, use the Split function and set "Number of pages" to 1. With pdftk on the command line, run "pdftk input.pdf burst" to create one file per page. Online tools like ILovePDF also offer a "split all pages" option.
In Chrome, press Ctrl+P and type the page numbers you want under Custom pages (for example, "2, 5, 8-12"). Click Save as PDF. In Adobe Acrobat, use Organize Pages to select and extract specific pages.
Most reputable online tools like ILovePDF and SmallPDF delete uploaded files after processing. However, you are still sending your document to a third-party server. For confidential documents like financial statements or contracts, use an offline method like Chrome, Preview, or a command-line tool.
Adobe Acrobat can split by file size, which is useful for email attachment limits. For free options, use an online tool and split by page range, or use pdftk on the command line to automate the process for very large documents.
If your goal is to get transaction data, invoice details, or table contents into a spreadsheet, splitting the PDF is an extra step. Use an AI extraction tool like Lido to pull structured data directly from the full PDF into labeled rows and columns without splitting first.
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