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pdfminer.six

Pure-Python library for pulling text, images and structure out of a PDF, with a command-line tool.

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extracting information from PDFs with pdfminer.six, where the README and high-level API document text extraction with automatic layout analysis, exact text location/font/colour information, embedded image extraction (JPG, PNG, TIFF, JBIG2 and bitmaps), HTML and hOCR output, PDF object parsing/analysis, AcroForm interactive form extraction, table-of-contents/outline extraction, tagged-content extraction, CJK and vertical-writing support, PDF-1.7 support qualified as almost complete, and pdf2txt.py/dumppdf.py command-line tools.

The scope records those documented extraction outputs, makes clear that an image-only scan needs a separate OCR engine, that (cid:x) values reflect font/Unicode mapping gaps, and that inferred reading order can interleave tables/columns; it makes no OCR, PDF-writing/editing, redaction, signing, repair or semantic/reading-order guarantee

Where your files are processed

No server involved

A pure-Python library and its pdf2txt.py command line. It runs in your own interpreter with no service, no account and no network call in the package. That is a property of the library itself: what an application built with it does with your file depends on that application, not on this.

The documented library and CLI run in the caller's own Python interpreter/machine and require no PDFminer account or hosted service. The project code is pure Python with platform-independent py3-none-any wheels, while its dependencies may have platform-specific wheels.

This is the documented local processing path, not an absolute no-network guarantee for every deployment or dependency.

What it does

pdfminer.six is a community-maintained MIT Python library and CLI for extracting information from PDFs. The current PyPI release is 20260107, uploaded 7 January 2026; it requires Python 3.10 or newer and publishes a py3-none-any wheel.

It parses a PDF into Python objects and provides automatic layout analysis for text, with exact location, font and colour information; it extracts embedded images (JPG, PNG, TIFF, JBIG2 and bitmaps), HTML or hOCR output, table-of-contents/outline data, tagged content and AcroForm interactive form fields, and supports CJK languages, vertical writing, various font types, common stream compressions, and RC4/AES-encrypted inputs.

The project code is pure Python, but installation brings charset-normalizer and cryptography, with Pillow only via the optional image extra. The CLI includes pdf2txt.py for text extraction and dumppdf.py for internal PDF object inspection.

It is a reader/extractor: it does not write or edit PDFs, does not perform OCR, and an image-only scan needs a separate OCR engine.

Best for

Python projects that need text, layout and object-level information from a PDF without adding a heavyweight dependency, including CJK/vertical documents and AcroForm field extraction. It is not an OCR or PDF-writing tool.

Worth knowing

The current PyPI release is 20260107, uploaded 7 January 2026, with Python >=3.10 and a py3-none-any wheel; the documentation's development version is newer, so do not treat a dev build as the released package. The code is MIT and community maintained; no company owner or legal entity is documented, and the copyright belongs to the original PDFMiner author, 2004-2016.

Although the project code is pure Python, installation requires charset-normalizer and cryptography, and image extraction needs the optional Pillow image extra; do not say it has no runtime or compiled dependencies. Text output order is inferred from layout, so tables become loose lines and complex multi-column pages can interleave; projects needing table structure should use a table-specific tool.

Some documents legitimately produce (cid:x) values when fonts lack a usable Unicode mapping; this is a font-mapping caveat, not OCR or a generic text guarantee. The package does not write, edit, redact, sign or repair PDFs and has no OCR; image-only scans produce no text without a separate OCR engine.

The library and pdf2txt.py have no built-in PDFminer service or account requirement, but this is not an absolute no-network guarantee for every deployment or dependency. PDF-1.7 support is qualified by the project as almost complete, and no semantic/reading-order or security guarantee is made.

Details, and where each comes from

Vendor statements, our own reading of their pages, and the things nobody has established yet, each answered separately. Where we have not confirmed something it says so rather than guessing, and a row nobody has established is greyed out.

Versions covered
Linux · Windows · macOS · Self-hosted
Website
pdfminersix.readthedocs.io
Requires an account
Not applicable
Watermark on the free tier
Not verified
Maximum file size
Not verified
Batch processing
Yes
Data residency
Self-hosted
Open source
Yes
Self-hostable
Yes
Licence
MIT.

MIT. The repository LICENSE is MIT and its copyright is 2004-2016 Yusuke Shinyama; pdfminer.six is the community-maintained Python 3 continuation of that project.

No company owner or legal maintainer entity is documented, so the owner is recorded as pdfminer.six contributors rather than a company. The package is published as pdfminer.six on PyPI under MIT; the source licence is established, so openSource is true.

Redaction
No redaction feature
Programmatic access
Embeddable library · Command line
Last availability check
Responded in 104 ms 21 October 2026

Checked automatically by our own runner, not reported by the vendor. 100% of our last 30 checks got a response.

What the redaction verdict rests on

From the vendor's own documentation, read 22 September 2026. Not tested by us.

“Pdfminer.six is a python package for extracting information from PDF documents.”

What that does not establish

Recorded as `none` on absence from the documented feature set, which is a list of things that read a PDF: parse objects, group text, extract text, images, table of contents and tagged content, support encryption and AcroForm fields. Nothing in it removes content, and the library does not write PDFs at all.

What it does not establish: that extracted text is safe. This is the same point the Apache Tika record makes - an extraction tool's output carries whatever was in the document, and reading it is not redacting it.

https://pdfminersix.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

What the vendor says

Claims are labelled rather than repeated as fact. Where we have checked something ourselves, it says so and shows when. Checked means we read the vendor's own page and it says what we recorded - not that we tested the behaviour, unless the note says we did.

  • “Pdfminer.six is a python package for extracting information from PDF documents.”

    Checked by us - the source says this Read 1 October 2026

    Confirmed. The quoted text appears in the rendered page as read on 2026-10-01.

    This claim was carried as reported rather than checked until this read.

    Standing: Not re-read against the live source

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://pdfminersix.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    b41c2d231127ebb21ea446a29f89fd8f20cb9477eef87cae23fb8caf261c9a6a

    How we checked

    Read as rendered text in headless Chrome on 2026-10-01 and saved to the evidence archive, so the read can be repeated against the same file. Comparison ignores case, punctuation and hyphenation, which is why "open-source" on the record matches "open source" on the page.

    What this hash proves, and what it does not

  • “Extract text, images (JPG, JBIG2 and Bitmaps), table-of-contents, tagged contents and more.”

    Checked by us - the source says this Read 1 October 2026

    Confirmed. The quoted text appears in the rendered page as read on 2026-10-01.

    This claim was carried as reported rather than checked until this read.

    Standing: Not re-read against the live source

    Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
    Read
    https://pdfminersix.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
    From
    the text a browser renders
    SHA-256
    b41c2d231127ebb21ea446a29f89fd8f20cb9477eef87cae23fb8caf261c9a6a

    How we checked

    Read as rendered text in headless Chrome on 2026-10-01 and saved to the evidence archive, so the read can be repeated against the same file. Comparison ignores case, punctuation and hyphenation, which is why "open-source" on the record matches "open source" on the page.

    What this hash proves, and what it does not

Each claim is quoted from the vendor's own pages. This section describes what we have and have not checked - it is not a judgement about anyone.

Sponsorship is distribution, not an endorsement or a promise of search rankings, AI citations, traffic, or sales. This listing is a free entry, compiled from published sources.

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Related reading

How this record was put together

Editorial review.
No editor has signed this record off. That is not the same as nothing having been checked, and the lines below say what has.
Source reading.
2 claims taken from the vendor's own pages, read between 1 October 2026 and 1 October 2026.
Website availability.
The vendor's site was last checked on 21 October 2026.
Behaviour testing.
We ran this ourselves. The file handling was watched directly.

Sources: https://pypi.org/project/pdfminer.six/ (20260107, 7 January 2026, Python >=3.10, py3-none-any, charset-normalizer/cryptography/Pillow image extra); https://github.com/pdfminer/pdfminer.six/blob/master/README.md (features, MIT/community fork, PDF-1.7 qualified, CJK/vertical, images/HTML/hOCR, AcroForm/TOC/tagged/layout, pdf2txt.py); https://github.com/pdfminer/pdfminer.six/blob/master/docs/source/tutorial/highlevel.rst (extract_text/extract_text_to_fp, HTML/layout); https://pdfminersix.readthedocs.io/en/master/tutorial/commandline.html (pdf2txt.py, dumppdf.py); CHANGELOG 20260107; read 2026-10-16.