How to Convert PDF to Text via API (No poppler, No pdfminer, No Local Libraries)

How to Convert PDF to Text via API (No poppler, No pdfminer, No Local Libraries) Converting PDFs to text locally means installing poppler-utils , pdfminer , or PyMuPDF — and then handling edge cases: scanned PDFs needing OCR, multi-column layouts, embedded images, password-protected files. It's a rabbit hole. For most applications — especially RAG pipelines, document processing workflows, and data extraction — a PDF API is the cleaner solution. Send the file, get back structured text. What to Consider When Choosing a PDF API Text extraction vs OCR : Does it handle scanned PDFs (image-based)? Structure preservation : Tables, headers, lists — does it maintain them? Output format : Plain text, markdown, or JSON with page/section structure? File size limits : PDFs can be large; check limits. Language support : OCR quality across languages varies. Price : Per page or per document? Comparison Table Tool Price OCR Output Format File Limit Limitations IteraTools ~$0.005/page (credits) Yes Text