PDF to EPUB Converter

PDF and EPUB solve opposite problems. A PDF promises that page 47 looks the same on every screen and printer, down to the line breaks. An EPUB makes no such promise: it is a package of web pages, images and a table of contents, and the reading app decides how the text is laid out on whatever screen it has.

On a laptop that difference barely matters. On a phone or a 6-inch e-ink reader it decides whether a document is readable at all. A full A4 or Letter page shrunk to a small screen leaves the text too small to read, and zooming in means scrolling sideways along every line. An EPUB simply wraps the text to the screen.

EPUB is maintained by the W3C, and the current version, EPUB 3.3, became a W3C Recommendation in 2023. Apple Books, Google Play Books, Kobo readers and most reading apps open it natively.

The converter reads the PDF's text in reading order, joins the lines of each paragraph, and uses headings to split the book into chapters. Pictures are placed between the paragraphs where they appeared. Things that only exist because of the page, such as running headers, page numbers and hyphenation at line ends, are removed so they do not interrupt the text.

Two settings change the result. Keep images decides whether photos and figures travel with the text; turning it off gives a small, text-only book that loads quickly on older e-readers. Selected pages lets you skip a cover sheet, a long appendix or blank pages so the ebook starts where the reading starts.

Expect the page count to disappear. An EPUB has no fixed pages, so reading apps show progress as a percentage or as locations instead, and a book that was 200 pages in PDF may show a very different number of screens depending on the font size you pick.

If your document falls on the right-hand side, keep it as a PDF and read it on a larger screen, or make a comic archive with the Ebook Converter, which can build a CBZ file for comic reader apps. If it falls on the left, an EPUB will be far more comfortable to read than the original.

When in doubt, convert a short range of pages first and open the result on the device you will actually read on. A few minutes with a sample chapter tells you more than any rule of thumb.

Apple Books on iPhone, iPad and Mac opens an EPUB from the Files app or an email attachment. Google Play Books lets you upload EPUB files to your library and read them on Android and on the web. Kobo readers take EPUB files copied by USB cable. Kindle owners can use Amazon's Send to Kindle service, which accepts EPUB.

You can convert up to 20 PDFs at once, each up to 95 MB, and each one becomes a separate EPUB. Uploads are deleted after processing and the ebooks 30 minutes later. If the target is a word processor rather than a reading app, PDF to Word gives you an editable document instead, and the PDF Converter lists every other output.