How to extract tables from a PDF into Excel or CSV

You have a PDF with a table — a bank statement, a price list, a report — and you want the rows in a spreadsheet. This page shows the honest options, starting with free ones. It also says what each option cannot do.

First, look at the PDF

Not every PDF is the same.

• Text PDF: you can highlight words with your mouse. These are the easy ones.
• Scanned PDF: each page is a picture. You cannot highlight the text. These need OCR (software that reads the picture).
• Mixed PDF: some pages are text, some are pictures.
• Tables that run onto the next page: the header often repeats. You may want those pages joined into one table.

If the file has a password, or sits behind a login, a cloud tool that only accepts a public link will not open it.

Try the built-in tools first

If you already have Excel or Google Drive, try these before you install anything.

Excel (Microsoft 365): Data → Get Data → From File → From PDF. Pick the tables, then load them. This works well on many text PDFs. It is weaker on scans and on tables that continue across pages.

Google Drive: upload the PDF, open it with Google Docs, then copy the table into Sheets. Layout can break.

If that already gives you clean rows, you are done.

Free local tool: PDF to CSV (text PDFs)

pdf-table-pull-lite is a free tool you run on your own computer. It has a command-line tool and an MCP server for AI apps. There is no API key and no account.

What it does

• Reads tables from text PDFs.
• Writes CSV (a spreadsheet file you can open in Excel or Google Sheets).
• Runs offline, so the PDF stays on your machine.

What it does not do

• It does not write Excel (.xlsx) files. The output is CSV only.
• It does not read scanned, image-only pages. There is no OCR in the lite tool.
• Cross-page joining is limited compared with the paid tools below.

That is on purpose. The lite tool is the small, free version.

Install and run

You need Python 3.

pip install pdf-table-pull-lite
pdf-table-pull-lite path/to/file.pdf -o tables.csv

Open tables.csv in Excel or Google Sheets. If a column looks wrong, try another table mode (bordered tables vs tables lined up by spacing). The README in the repo lists the flags.

If the cells come out empty or as a jumble, your PDF may be a scan. The lite tool will not fix that. Use one of the OCR options below.

When you need Excel, page joins, or OCR

Use a fuller tool if you need any of these:

• An Excel file with one sheet per table
• Tables that continue across pages joined into one table (repeated headers dropped)
• Scanned or mixed PDFs read with OCR
• A public link you want to run in the cloud, on a schedule

Option A: Apify Actor (cloud)

PDF Table Extractor runs on Apify. You give it links to PDF files.

Price (November 2026): $0.003 per text page that has a table, or $0.01 per scanned page read with OCR. Pages with no tables are free. Failed links are free. Apify also adds a small start fee for the run (this is higher if the run uses more memory).

Honest limits: the PDF link must be public and must download the file itself. Password-protected PDFs and files behind a login will not work in this Actor. OCR can misread a blurry scan, so check the numbers on those pages.

1. Open the Actor page.

2. Leave the sample PDF or paste your own PDF links.

3. Click Start.

4. In the run results, export the dataset as CSV or Excel, or download the Excel file from the key-value store (one file per PDF, one sheet per table).

Option B: paid tool on your own computer

If the files are private and you do not want them in the cloud, the same extractor is sold as a one-time download on Gumroad. It can write Excel, CSV or JSON, join tables across pages, and open password-protected PDFs. It is not free.

A short way to choose

Related guides

• How to turn a PDF or Word file into Markdown for AI and notes
• How to check a website for broken links
• How to flatten nested JSON into CSV

These tools are made by Tidy Byte Tools.