Crop PDF
Drag a box on the page — that crop is applied to every page. Runs in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
About Crop PDF
Crop PDF trims the page down to the area you actually want, cutting away wide margins, scanner edges and anything else surrounding the content. You drag a box over the region to keep and the rest is removed. It runs in your browser, free and without a watermark.
The clearest case for cropping is reading on a small screen. Academic papers and reports are laid out for A4 paper with generous margins, which means that on a phone or e-reader you are looking at a thin strip of text framed by white space, at a size nobody can read. Cropping the margins away lets the remaining content fill the display, and it can be the difference between a document being readable on a tablet and being useless there.
Scans produce a different mess worth fixing. A book photographed on a desk carries the desk, your fingers and a shadow down one side. A receipt scanned on a flatbed sits in the corner of a mostly blank A4 page. Cropping to the content makes these look deliberate, prints without wasting toner on grey borders, and stops the actual content being reduced to a stamp in the middle of a large empty sheet.
How to Crop PDF
- Select the PDF you want to crop.
- Drag a box over the area you want to keep.
- Check the box against a busy page as well as a sparse one, so nothing important falls outside it.
- Apply the crop to all pages, or just the ones that need it.
- Download the cropped PDF.
Tips & common problems
Check your widest page before applying to all
One crop box applied to every page will clip anything that extends further — a wide table, a full-bleed image, a pull quote in the margin. Find the busiest page and set the box there.
Cropping hides rather than deletes
The PDF format defines a visible region, so cropped-away content may still exist in the file and can be restored by other software. Never rely on cropping to remove sensitive material — use Redact for that.
Leave a small breathing margin
Cropping exactly to the text edge looks cramped and risks clipping descenders. A few millimetres of white space reads much better.
File size stays the same
Since the content is hidden rather than removed, a cropped PDF is no smaller. Run it through Compress PDF if size is the goal.
Frequently asked questions
How do I crop a PDF for free?
Drag a box over the area you want to keep and download the result. No signup and no watermark.
Is my file uploaded?
No. Cropping happens entirely in your browser, so the document never leaves your device.
Can I crop only some pages?
Yes. Apply the crop to the whole document or to selected pages, which is useful when only your scanned pages have unwanted borders.
Does cropping delete the hidden content?
No. It changes the visible page area, and the material outside it may remain in the file. For genuine removal of sensitive content, use Redact.
Will cropping reduce my file size?
Not meaningfully, because the underlying content is still there. Use Compress PDF if you need a smaller file.
Can I undo a crop?
Your original file is untouched, so simply start again from it. The cropped version is always a separate download.