Split a PDF into Separate Files
Splitting a PDF is really three requests wearing the same coat: pull chapter two out of a report, cut a stack of two-page invoices into individual ones, or burst a 40-page scan into 40 files because whatever you are uploading them to wants them separately. This page does all three, previews exactly what it will produce before it produces it, and never sends your document anywhere.
Drop the PDF you want to split
One file at a time, up to 500 pages. Split by page ranges, every N pages, or into one file per page — all in this browser tab.
Stop splitting the same document every month
If you are cutting the same report apart every time it is generated, the fix is upstream. Moda builds the documents and exports each section already separate.
Try Moda free →The page-range syntax, in full
Ranges are written the way you would say them: `1-3` is the first three pages, `7` is a single page, `9-` runs from page nine to the end, and `-4` runs from the start to page four. Commas separate them, and in range mode each comma-separated group becomes its OWN file — that is the difference between splitting and extracting, and it is why `1-3, 4-8` gives you two documents rather than one document of eight pages. Two less obvious behaviours are deliberate. A reversed range like `5-2` is not an error: it gives you pages 5, 4, 3, 2 in that order, because someone typing it backwards usually means it. And a page number the document does not have is refused by name rather than quietly clamped, so `1-3, 99` on a five-page file tells you about page 99 instead of handing you three pages and hoping you do not notice.
Which mode to reach for
Ranges are for documents whose structure you know: chapters, sections, the appendix you want on its own. “Every N pages” is for documents with a repeating shape — a batch of double-sided invoices, a set of two-page statements, exam papers printed back to back — where you do not want to type twenty ranges to say one thing. “One file per page” is for the case where something downstream demands single pages: a filing portal, a print shop, a system that indexes one image per record. Any split producing more than one document offers a zip, and every file inside it is named after your original with its range appended, so a folder of them still tells you what they are.
Splitting does not re-render your pages
Each output document gets the original page copied into it — same content stream, same embedded fonts, same vectors, same links. Text stays selectable and searchable, and a page that was 40 KB of crisp type does not come back as a 400 KB picture of type. This is worth checking in any split tool you use: the lazy implementation renders each page to an image and wraps it in a new PDF, which looks right on screen and fails the moment anyone tries to copy a paragraph, search the file, or print it larger than it was rendered. One consequence of copying rather than re-rendering: each part carries its share of the original’s shared resources, so five parts of a document can add up to slightly more than the original.
What happens to the parts of a PDF that are not pages
A PDF holds more than pages, and not all of it can be divided. Bookmarks and the outline tree are dropped, because an outline pointing at pages that are no longer in the file is worse than no outline. Form fields come across as their drawn appearance rather than as fillable fields. Links to a page inside the original document break if their target lands in a different part — an unavoidable consequence of the split, not an oversight. Links to a website keep working. If the document you are cutting is a fillable form and the fields matter, split it in a desktop PDF editor instead; this page is for documents, not forms.
Frequently asked questions
Does my file get uploaded to split it?
No. The document is read into this browser tab, the pages are copied into new documents in memory, and the results are handed to your browser as downloads. Nothing crosses the network, which matters most for exactly the documents people split: contracts, statements, medical records, and scans of things with numbers on them.
How many files can one split produce?
As many as the document has pages — a 500-page PDF can become 500 single-page files, and the zip will hold all of them. The cap that exists is on the input: 500 pages per document, and 100 MB per file. Both are the limits of doing this inside a browser tab rather than a policy.
Why does my split document open at a different zoom or page layout?
Page-level view settings travel with the page, but document-level ones — the initial zoom, the “open to page 4” instruction, the two-page spread preference — belong to the original file and are not carried into the parts. Your reader falls back to its own defaults. Nothing about the pages themselves has changed.
Can I split a password-protected PDF?
No, and it is refused by name rather than half-processed. Removing PDF passwords is deliberately outside what these tools do. Open the file with the password in any reader, save an unprotected copy, and split that.
What is the difference between this and deleting pages?
This page produces multiple documents out of one. If what you want is a single document with some pages removed, reordered, or turned the right way up, that is the organize-pages tool — one file in, one file out. Splitting and organizing genuinely are different jobs, which is why they are different pages.