The Best Free PDF to Word Converters in 2026

Converting a PDF to Word is easy. Getting back a document you can edit without rebuilding half of it is not. The reason is structural: a PDF records where each piece of text is drawn on the page, not that a set of lines is a table or that two blocks are columns. Every converter has to guess the structure back, and they guess with very different success.

They also differ in what the free version allows, whether they can read scanned pages, and where your file goes while it is being converted. For a lease or a medical letter, that last point decides it.

How we compared them

We checked each tool against its own published documentation, help pages and pricing in October 2026. Several vendors do not publish their free daily limit, and third-party figures for those limits disagree, so where a number is not on the vendor’s own page we leave it out. We include our own converter and are plain about how narrow its job is.

The short answer

1. Microsoft Word: best if you already have it

The converter most people overlook is the one already on their computer. Word for Microsoft 365, 2024, 2021, 2019 and 2016 opens a PDF directly: use File, Open, choose the PDF, and Word converts a copy while leaving the original alone. Word for the web can do the same with a PDF stored in OneDrive.

Microsoft is unusually honest about the limits. Its own help page says the feature works best on documents that are mostly text, and lists what may not convert well: tables with cell spacing, page colours and borders, footnotes that run across pages, endnotes, tracked changes, comments and bookmarks. A PDF that is mostly charts can arrive as page images. For a letter, a contract or a report, though, the result is usually editable with little cleanup, and there is no daily limit.

2. Adobe Acrobat online: best layout from a free tool

Adobe invented the format, and its free online converter is the one to try when the layout matters: two columns, a table you do not want to retype, images that need to stay where they are. Adobe says columns, tables, headers, footers and footnotes convert correctly “in most cases”, and that complex layouts may need some cleanup.

The catch is quantity. Adobe applies a daily conversion limit without saying what it is, and after the first conversion you may be asked to sign in to download. Files up to 100 MB are accepted and are processed on Adobe’s servers. If you need more than the occasional conversion, Acrobat Standard costs US$14.99 a month on an annual plan.

3. PDF24 Tools: best free option with no cap

PDF24 is ad-funded and says so, and in exchange it states that there is no registration, no time restriction and no limit on use. It is also the only web tool here that gives you a choice of conversion modes. You can keep the original layout fixed in place or reflow the text into ordinary paragraphs, which is easier to edit. Image quality and resolution are adjustable.

Files are converted on PDF24’s servers in Germany and deleted after an hour. Scanned PDFs need its separate OCR tool first, which produces a searchable PDF that you then convert. PDF24 also offers a free Windows desktop app, PDF24 Creator, that keeps files on your PC. It does not run on Mac.

4. Google Docs: best free OCR for scanned PDFs

If your PDF came from a scanner or a phone camera, there is no text in it to convert, only pictures of pages. Most online converters keep the fix, optical character recognition, for paying customers. Google Docs does it free. Upload the PDF to Google Drive, right-click it, and choose Open with, then Google Docs. You can then download the result as a Word file.

Google publishes both the limits and the losses. OCR only works on files of 2 MB or less, and text should be at least 10 pixels high and the right way up. Bold, italics, font size and line breaks are usually kept. Lists, tables, columns, footnotes and endnotes usually are not. Treat it as a way to get the words back, not the layout.

5. Smallpdf: polished, but limited

Smallpdf needs no account for a first conversion, says it keeps formatting intact, and deletes files from its servers an hour after processing. The interface is the cleanest of the web tools. The free tier is a small daily allowance shared across all of Smallpdf’s tools, though Smallpdf does not publish the number, and OCR for scanned PDFs is a Pro feature. There is a 7-day trial of Pro.

6. iLovePDF: one file at a time

iLovePDF converts one file per task on the free plan and deletes uploads within two hours. Like Smallpdf, it reserves PDF-to-Word with OCR for its paid Premium plan. Its main advantage is reach: as well as the website, there are desktop apps for Windows and Mac and mobile apps for iOS and Android. If you already use iLovePDF to merge or compress files, its converter is perfectly adequate for an ordinary text PDF.

7. LibreOffice: offline and free, but not true conversion

LibreOffice is free, open source, and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux without sending anything anywhere. It opens PDFs in Draw, its drawing program, and that is the important caveat: every line of text arrives as its own text box rather than as flowing paragraphs. Fixing a typo or changing a date is easy. Rewriting a paragraph is miserable, because the lines will not reflow. There is no OCR.

If the PDF was exported from LibreOffice as a hybrid PDF in the first place, it reopens as a fully editable document. That is worth knowing if you produce the PDFs yourself.

8. ConvertStuff: the words only, never uploaded

Our PDF to Word converter does a deliberately narrow job. It reads the text layer of the PDF inside your browser and writes it into a clean .docx. Nothing is uploaded. It does not try to rebuild fonts, columns, tables or images, so the output is plain text in Word’s default style. Multi-column pages may read across the columns.

That makes it the wrong tool for a brochure and a reasonable one for a confidential document whose words you need to edit or quote, where uploading it is the thing you cannot do. If you need the layout too, use Word’s own Open PDF, which also runs on your own computer. A scanned PDF has no text layer, so our tool stops with a message rather than returning an empty document. Use image to text (OCR) for those, or PDF to TXT if you do not need a Word file at all.

9. Sejda: pick layout or readability

Sejda’s converter offers a choice most tools hide: keep the layout, or optimise for legibility, which gives cleaner text that is easier to edit. The free web tool allows 3 tasks an hour and files up to 50 MB, one at a time, and deletes uploads after two hours. Scanned PDFs need its separate OCR tool first. Sejda Desktop, for Windows, Mac and Linux, processes files on your computer, with a free allowance of 3 tasks a day and OCR up to 10 pages. A Web Week Pass costs $5 and does not auto-renew.

10. PDFgear: free desktop apps

PDFgear says it is completely free with no sign-up, and its desktop apps for Windows and Mac convert on your own device with no stated size limit. Its Advanced mode adds OCR for scanned documents. The web version accepts files up to 100 MB, processes them on servers in the United States, and asks you to share on social media to keep converting. Its pages give conflicting answers about how long uploads are kept, so use the app for anything private.

11. PDF Candy: OCR applied automatically

PDF Candy applies OCR automatically, which saves a step with scans. Uploads are deleted after two hours. The free plan has hourly and file-size restrictions that PDF Candy does not quantify, and no batch conversion. Paid plans start at $6 a month for the web, or $99 for a lifetime licence that includes an offline Windows app.

12. Foxit online: simple and free

Foxit, a long-established PDF software company, offers a free online converter with no account and a 15 MB limit per file. Foxit says files are encrypted, deleted after processing, and not used for training. It has no built-in OCR, so run scans through its separate OCR tool first. Batch conversion needs the paid Foxit PDF Editor, which has a 14-day trial.

13. Zamzar: for the occasional file

Zamzar is one of the oldest online converters and has separate PDF to DOC and PDF to DOCX tools. The free plan is tight: two files every 24 hours, at the lowest priority, and its own pages disagree on the free size limit. Free files are stored for up to 24 hours. No OCR is stated. Paid plans start at $12 a month.

Which one to use

• An ordinary text document and you have Word: open it in Word.
• A complex layout you do not want to rebuild: Adobe Acrobat online.
• Lots of files, no budget: PDF24 Tools, with the reflow mode if you plan to edit.
• A scan or a phone photo of a page: Google Docs, if the file is under 2 MB.
• Something confidential: anything that runs on your machine, which means Word desktop, LibreOffice or a browser tool that does not upload.

Check this before you blame the converter

Most reports of a converter “not working” are scanned PDFs. Open the file and try to select a sentence with your cursor. If you can highlight individual words, the PDF has a text layer and any converter above will find it. If you can only draw a box over the page, it is a picture, and you need OCR, not conversion.

Tables are the other common failure, for the same structural reason. The ruled lines in a PDF table are separate drawing instructions with no connection to the numbers between them, so the converter has to infer the cells from spacing alone. Our guide to what happens inside a PDF when you convert it explains why, and how to tell in advance which parts of a file will survive.