The best PDF splitter software comes in handy when the PDF file to share is very large and can’t be uploaded to certain services, or when you require just an excerpt from a PDF with a very big number of pages. The need for small and manageable PDFs that can be easily transferred on digital platforms is one of the main reasons for splitting PDFs.
Most PDF splitters offer several options for splitting a PDF file. You can split the document into multiple files, where the page becomes a separate PDF file, or extract specific pages from the PDF file.
Also, you can delete individual parts of the PDF file, so that you only have the required part of the original. Another way is to split the PDF file by selecting a range of pages. Some PDF splitters let you combine ranges of split pages.
The best PDF splitter software can split a document by size, which is the ideal solution if your PDF is too large to upload to a website or send by mail.
Simply select the size of each fragment of the PDF file. Then the software will split the PDF file into as many parts as necessary so that each file is smaller than the specified size.
Verdict: Adobe Acrobat allows dividing big PDF documents into smaller files that can be more easily shared and uploaded. All you need to do is drag and drop the desired file into the dedicated area to upload it. Log into your account and start working on the PDF.
Once the document is uploaded, you’ll see thumbnail previews of each page. Move the mouse cursor over the dashed lines between the pages to divide the PDF into several documents as you see fit. This tool also lets you reorder the pages or delete as many of them as needed. Once you’re done, press Continue. You can either save the edited documents in the same folder as the original or add a new folder for them.
Verdict: The iLovePDF website is one of the easiest ways to split PDF into pages and individual PDF files online. You have to upload the PDF files to the online platform and start the merge process thanks to the drag and drop capability.
You can also connect iLovePDF to your Google Drive or Dropbox accounts. Once the PDF file is uploaded, you get various options for combining, splitting, compressing, converting, extracting and organizing the PDF pages according to your needs.
When the files are hosted online, you can rotate the pages or drag and drop the PDF files to change the order of the merge. The platform displays thumbnails of each page to make it easier to work with files.
Verdict: All-in-One Online PDF Editor and Converter PDFChef from Movavi contains a speedy and secure online tool, PDFChef Splitter. It is free and doesn’t require login or user registration.
Downloading and processing a PDF file with an online tool will take a minute, regardless of the file size or number of pages. Working in this PDF splitter isn’t risky. The entire process of splitting PDF files takes place on the client’s browser side, so you can be sure that the data won’t become available to the platform for conversion.
The full-featured interface of PDFChef lets you split a PDF file into several single-page files or extract specific PDF pages to create a new PDF document. Then you can edit the PDF files/pages on the same page and convert the PDF to the main image formats and MS Office.
Verdict: After uploading your PDF file, there are two simple split choices. You can either extract each page into a separate PDF file (paid option) or choose which pages to extract.
Once you see a preview of the thumbnails, select the pages you need. After splitting, you can convert the PDF file to Word or Powerpoint, compress it, merge it with other PDFs and edit it on the Smallpdf website.
Another unique feature, which makes Smallpdf the best PDF splitter, is combining some PDF pages with selected pages of another PDF to avoid intermediate extraction and merging processes. This platform offers a simple electronic signature and the ability to add comments.
Besides, Smallpdf is the best free PDF to word converter, which can highlight and protect the information stored in PDF files. It provides maximum security for downloaded files that are automatically deleted within an hour.
Verdict: EasePDF is a simple cross-platform online PDF service with many basic tools for editing, converting, creating and managing PDF files. You can easily create, convert, split, compress and combine PDF files.
Simply import and perform operations without losing the quality of the final result. All pages of your PDF file will be displayed in the interface as thumbnails. It is also possible to rotate, scale or reorder pages.
The All Pages mode will select each PDF page to split. If there are certain pages that you wish to exclude from the newly created PDF, just click on them and they will be removed from the split pages.
You can also select “Split every (*) pages” by entering a number in the field. The last split mode is the setup mode. You can selectively select specific pages to split. Just enter the number of start and end pages.
Verdict: Jinapdf allows splitting PDF files as large as 300Mb into smaller documents. You simply have to pick which PDF you need to split. Afterward, the utility will automatically break it down into smaller PDFs that can be downloaded as a zip archive.
This tool managed to split my PDF file rather quickly, as the entire process took less than a minute. Moreover, I didn’t have to register or even download the software. Another advantage of this option is that it allows using other online tools for working with PDF documents – you can convert a file into a different format, merge multiple files, as well as compress or extract them.
Verdict: I once had to separate contracts and invoices stored in one PDF file for a client presentation. CoolUtils offers several options to split the files: by page ranges, by bookmarks, by blank pages, which made it easier to manage the documents efficiently.
This is an option in Split PDF, which by the way enabled the file to split by blank pages and export each section to a separate file. The naming feature helped me organize the resulting file with clear, descriptive names. Additionally, multiple files can be processed simultaneously, which saves a great deal of time.
Verdict: With the free browser version of PDFescape, you can edit PDF files online. Or you can use a more powerful open-source desktop application for Windows. With PDFescape online, you get a lot of handy PDF editing options, such as the ability to take notes by hand and a tool for adding interactive URL links to your documents. Using the PDFescape version in the browser, it is easy to add, rotate and annotate pages.
The software is a combination of an online reader, an editor, a form-filling tool and a PDF organizer. You can easily open any PDF file from your PC, view it online, merge multiple files into one large PDF file or split them into multiple files.
It is possible to add text, shapes and other objects to the PDF without any problems. A typical A4 PDF page takes up about a hundred KB of data, so it shouldn’t be an issue unless you are editing a book-sized document.
Verdict: When it comes to separating PDF files, PDFSAM is a cross-platform package with many features. It boasts the ability to compose documents, compress, split/merge/rotate/crop PDF files, encrypt/decrypt, repair, extract text, convert to grayscale. PDFSAM performs this in several modes.
You can split the PDF file after each page, into even and odd pages, by the given page numbers, or split into every “n” pages. This will let you extract the selected pages or rotate them in batch mode.
Verdict: Being a complete cross-platform package for editing PDF files and related operations, PDFelement is also the best comprehensive tool for splitting PDF files and all types of manipulations.
With its PDF file management tool, you can read, edit, convert, fill out PDF forms, annotate, compress, protect and sign PDF files. There you will find the basic functions of splitting and combining PDF files by the number of pages or top-level bookmarks. All this makes PDFelement the best PDF editor app.
You can use PDFelement to rotate pages, merge pages into one image, replace or add pages from another PDF, insert blank pages, print specific pages, extract form data, add a password, crop a PDF page, save a PDF page to multiple file formats (images, Excel, Word, TXT, HWP, PowerPoint).
Verdict: This standalone free program to split PDF files provides various capabilities, including splitting into single-page files, splitting into groups of pages, a range of pages, or getting rid of certain pages with the available split modes.
Just select the “Split” option in the main window and any of the options to split the PDF file. Save each page to a separate single-page PDF file, group the pages together to split the PDF file into parts, choose which pages to remove from the PDF file.
If you have selected the “By page groups” mode, you can decide how many pages there will be in each group and from which page the splitting will start. Also, you can delete pages that you don’t want to leave by selecting the “Delete Specific Pages” mode. Last but not least, you can split a PDF file by page ranges.
Verdict: PDF Xchange Editor is one of the best PDF splitter software mainly due to the fact that it is minimalistic, fast and not devoid of many features as one of the best free PDF readers. The tool works completely offline, so it doesn’t require an Internet connection, except when you need to share the files.
The interface is a bit more complex than that of the online tool. But it gives you access to a lot of useful features, such as a stamp option to mark documents as “Expired” or “Approved”. For most users, the reason for using PDF-Xchange Editor is that it comes with integrated optical character recognition (OCR).
So, if your original PDF document is a photocopy, PDF-Xchange will still recognize the text and let you edit it, reformat the text, and even convert it to fonts that aren’t yet downloaded to the PC.
