Delete Pages From a PDF
Remove pages you do not want and keep the rest. Type the page numbers or ranges to drop and the tool shows you exactly which pages survive before anything is written, so a typo becomes something you notice rather than something you discover later. The document is rebuilt with qpdf, which moves the page objects rather than redrawing them, so bookmarks and links survive — and the original file on your device is never modified.
Use this without the search next time. Prathom Workbench puts Prathom's tools in your toolbar.
Add to Chrome — freeDelete PDF pages
Remove specific pages and keep everything else, in order.
What it does
- Delete by page number, range, or odd/even
- Live preview of the pages that will be kept
- Refuses to produce an empty document
- Original file never modified
- No watermark, no account, deleted within 30 minutes
How to use Delete PDF Pages
- 1
Open the PDF
Drop the file in. Its page count appears immediately, which is what you need before choosing page numbers.
- 2
List the pages to remove
Type numbers and ranges — "3", "7-9", "12-" for page twelve onwards. The keywords odd, even, first and last also work.
- 3
Check what remains
The panel shows the pages being removed and, more usefully, the pages being kept. Read the second one.
- 4
Delete and save
Press Delete pages and save the result. Your original file on disk is untouched, so a mistake costs nothing but a repeat.
How it works
Deletion is implemented as the inverse of keeping. Your selection is parsed into a set of page numbers, that set is subtracted from the full range, and a new document is built containing only what remains. The original is never edited in place; nothing is removed from a file, a different file is constructed.
That framing is why the preview shows both lists. Internally the tool cares about the pages it keeps, so showing you the same thing it is about to act on is more truthful than showing only what you typed.
Copying pages carries their full contents across untouched — text, vectors, embedded images, annotations — with internal references renumbered so they resolve in the new document. Nothing is rendered or re-compressed, so the pages that survive are byte-for-byte as good as they were.
The parser accepts more than plain numbers because the common cases deserve shortcuts. Ranges can be open at either end, so "28-" is everything from page 28 onwards and "-5" is the first five. The keywords odd, even, first and last cover the patterns that would otherwise mean typing out a long list. A reversed range like "9-7" is read as 7 to 9, on the grounds that it is a typo rather than an instruction.
When you'd use this
Scanner artifacts are the most frequent case. Duplex scanning a single-sided stack produces a blank page after every sheet, and the even keyword removes all of them at once.
Trimming before circulation is the second: dropping a cover sheet, an internal notes page, a pricing appendix, or a signature page that should not go to everyone.
Fixing a merge is the third. Combining documents that each had a title page leaves a title page scattered through the result, and removing them is faster than merging again more carefully.
The redaction warning, stated plainly
If your reason for removing a page is that it contains something sensitive, and the sensitive thing is on a page you want to keep, this tool is not the answer and neither is drawing a black box over it.
A PDF stores text as text. A rectangle drawn on top is a separate object painted over it. The text underneath remains in the file, fully selectable, fully extractable by any tool that reads text — including the text extractor on this site. Documents have been leaked this way repeatedly, by organizations with lawyers.
Deleting the whole page does work, because the page's content never enters the output document. Anything short of that needs software that genuinely removes content rather than covering it.
Examples
Removing scanner blanks from a double-sided batch
Feeding single-sided documents through a duplex scanner produces a blank page after every real one. The even keyword removes all ten in a single instruction rather than typing out the list, and the preview confirms the pattern is the one you expected before anything is deleted.
Dropping an appendix and a cover sheet
The open-ended range "28-" means page 28 to the end without needing to know that the end is 34. This matters when the same edit is applied to documents of varying length, and it removes a class of error where the final page is accidentally left behind.
Frequently asked questions
Does deleting a page really remove its content from the file?
Yes. The document is rebuilt from the pages you keep, so a removed page's content stream is not carried into the output at all. This is genuinely different from hiding a page, and it is why deletion is a real answer for removing a confidential page from a document you are about to share.
Is this the same as redaction?
No, and the difference matters. Deleting a page removes that whole page. Redaction means removing specific text or an image from within a page that you are keeping, and drawing a black rectangle over it does not achieve that — the text is still in the file underneath and can be selected, copied, or extracted. If you need to remove part of a page, use software built for redaction.
Can I delete every page?
No. A PDF must contain at least one page, so a selection that removes everything is refused with an explanation rather than producing a file no reader will open. If you genuinely want nothing left, you want to delete the file rather than its pages.
What happens to bookmarks pointing at deleted pages?
The document outline is not carried into the rebuilt file, so bookmarks are lost — including the ones that pointed at pages you kept. This is a real limitation. Page content, internal links between kept pages, and annotations do survive. For a document whose navigation matters, check the result before circulating it.
Is my document uploaded to do this?
Yes. The document is sent to our server, rebuilt with qpdf, and handed back; the upload is deleted the moment that finishes and the result within thirty minutes. It is worth being exact about that here, because the usual reason to delete a page is that it contains something you would rather not circulate.