How do I crop a PDF in the browser?

Drop your PDF onto the tool. The first page appears as a preview with a draggable rectangle. Adjust the rectangle, choose whether to apply the crop to every page or only the first, and click Crop and download.

Does cropping reduce the PDF file size?

It depends on the mode. Remove the cut-off area usually makes a text PDF much larger, about 1 MB per dense A4 page, because each cropped page becomes an image; scanned PDFs may shrink. Keep text selectable leaves the content in the file, so the size barely changes.

Will the cropped content be lost forever?

With the default, Remove the cut-off area, yes: each cropped page is rebuilt as an image of the selected area, so the rest of the page is not in the downloaded file. With Keep text selectable, no: only the page boxes change, and the area outside the rectangle stays in the file, where another tool can bring it back.

Can I crop different pages differently?

This tool applies one crop rectangle to either all pages or only the first page. For per-page cropping, run the tool repeatedly on subsets of the PDF, or split it first using the split PDF tool.

Is my PDF uploaded to a server?

All cropping happens in your browser using pdfjs-dist for rendering and pdf-lib for writing. Our servers are not involved at any point.

Crop PDF Online

Drop a PDF, drag a rectangle on the live preview, and download a cropped copy. By default the cut-off area is removed: each cropped page is rebuilt as an image of the selected area. Choose Keep text selectable to resize the page boxes instead and keep the text. All processing runs in your browser.

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How it works

pdfjs-dist renders the first page in your browser, and you drag a rectangle over it to mark what to keep. The rectangle is converted to PDF coordinates with pdf.js's own page transform, which accounts for page rotation, CropBox insets, and offset page origins. With the default Remove the cut-off area, pdf.js renders only the selected area of each cropped page at 216 dpi, and the JPEG image replaces that page in a new PDF: its text is no longer selectable or searchable, and its links and form fields are dropped. Pages that are not cropped keep their text. With Keep text selectable, pdf-lib sets the MediaBox and CropBox of each cropped page and removes its thumbnail and the comments and links wholly outside the box, but the cut-off text and images stay in the file.

Processing runs in your browser

All cropping happens inside your browser tab. The preview is rendered with pdfjs-dist and the cropped PDF is written by pdf-lib in memory; our servers are not involved at any point. You can verify this yourself in your browser's DevTools Network tab.

Related operations

To reduce file size after cropping, try compress PDF. To rotate pages before cropping, use rotate PDF. For per-page cropping, split first with split PDF.

Frequently asked questions

How do I crop a PDF in the browser?: Drop your PDF onto the tool. The first page appears as a preview with a draggable rectangle. Adjust the rectangle, choose whether to apply the crop to every page or only the first, and click Crop and download.
Does cropping reduce the PDF file size?: It depends on the mode. Remove the cut-off area usually makes a text PDF much larger, about 1 MB per dense A4 page, because each cropped page becomes an image; scanned PDFs may shrink. Keep text selectable leaves the content in the file, so the size barely changes.
Will the cropped content be lost forever?: With the default, Remove the cut-off area, yes: each cropped page is rebuilt as an image of the selected area, so the rest of the page is not in the downloaded file. With Keep text selectable, no: only the page boxes change, and the area outside the rectangle stays in the file, where another tool can bring it back.
Can I crop different pages differently?: This tool applies one crop rectangle to either all pages or only the first page. For per-page cropping, run the tool repeatedly on subsets of the PDF, or split it first using the split PDF tool.
Is my PDF uploaded to a server?: All cropping happens in your browser using pdfjs-dist for rendering and pdf-lib for writing. Our servers are not involved at any point.

Last reviewed September 30, 2026

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