Split a PDF into pages in four steps
- Open the PDF splitter and choose the PDF, or drop it on the page.
- Wait for the page list to appear. Each page of the original becomes its own one page PDF.
- Download everything as one ZIP, or download any single page from the list, with its size shown beside it.
- Unzip the folder and use the files.
The splitting happens in your browser. Your PDF is not uploaded, so scanned contracts, statements and forms stay private. To check that for yourself, see is it safe to upload a PDF to a free website. There is no account, no page limit set by ClipLime and no watermark.
What the files are called
Files are named after your original with the real page number, like report-page-1.pdf, report-page-2.pdf and so on. The numbers are those of the original document, so you can tell which page is which even after you sort, delete or share a few of them. Keep the ZIP if you may need the full set again.
When one page per file is what you need
Splitting is the opposite of merging, and the situations are common ones:
- A batch scan. A scanner produced one long PDF of separate documents, and each page needs to go to a different person or folder.
- Signed or filled in pages that need to be sent on their own.
- Handing out a document. One page per recipient, or one chapter opening per file.
- Saving one page. You want a single page of a long PDF and do not want to send the rest.
- Preparing a re-order. Split first, then merge the pages you want in the order you want.
People search for this as unmerging PDF documents, a PDF separator or a PDF divider. They are the same job. Note that a PDF does not remember how it was put together, so splitting cuts it by pages, not back into the original files it came from. The guide to combining PDF files covers the opposite job.
Split a PDF on a Mac
Preview can pull out pages: show the thumbnail sidebar, select the pages, then drag them to the desktop, which creates a new PDF of just those pages. That works for a few pages but is tedious for a whole document. In Safari or Chrome, the browser tool does every page at once and puts them in a ZIP, which macOS opens with a double click.
Split a PDF on Windows
There is no built-in splitter in Windows. You can print a page range to Save as PDF from Edge or Chrome, one range at a time, but you would repeat that for every page. Using the browser tool, the whole document is split in one go and you unzip it in File Explorer with Extract All.
Split a PDF on iPhone or Android
Open the page in Safari or Chrome, tap Choose file and pick the PDF from the Files app or your cloud drive. After splitting, download single pages from the list, or the ZIP, which your phone's Files app can open. Very large PDFs are limited by phone memory, and if the browser stops, a computer will manage it.
Scanned documents
A scanned PDF holds one picture per page, so the single page files add up to about the size of the original. That is expected, and not a sign something went wrong. If you split a PDF made mostly of text, though, you may see the combined size of the pieces come out larger than the original. Each file carries its own copy of shared things, such as fonts, which the original stored once.
If the pages are too big to send, run a page through Reduce PDF size afterwards. If you need the words from a scan, how to copy text from a PDF explains what works and what needs OCR software.
What each page keeps, and what it loses
- Kept: text, which stays selectable, images, links to websites, and each page's size, rotation and crop.
- Not kept: bookmarks, links that jump to another page of the document, fillable form fields (they keep their look but stop being editable), and the title and author of the original.
The pages are copied, not redrawn, so they look the same as before.
If you only need some of the pages
Splitting every page into a file is the right tool when you want all the pages separated. If you only want to drop pages, Remove pages from PDF keeps the rest together as one file. If the pages are in the wrong order, Reorder PDF pages is quicker than splitting and merging again. The guide to deleting pages from a PDF goes through the first case.
Note that this page splits into single pages only. It does not cut into ranges like 1-10 and 11-20, or at a file size. For ranges, every N pages or bookmarks, the full Split PDF tool does that.
Limits
PDFs protected with a password or permission settings are not supported, because ClipLime does not remove passwords. Big files depend on your device's memory, and you will see a warning when a PDF may be too large for it.