What is a PDF Parser?
Back to Blog Table of contents On this page What is a PDF Parser? Home › Blog › Data Extraction › What is a PDF Parser? Categories Data Extraction PDF Tags ai platform for data extraction algodocs character recognition data extraction from images deep learning export extracted data to excel invoice process machine learning ocr api web-based ai platform for data extraction By Shubhankar Biswas Published October 13, 2025, 12:03 Updated July 29, 2026, 02:32 A PDF Parser is a program or a library that enables end-users and organizations to parse data from native PDF documents. Often, organizations need to parse PDF documents for specific fields such as Account Number, Date, Address, Bill to/from information, or parse tabular data. PDF Parsers are usually needed and used for processing and parsing data from large amounts of documents. On the other hand, when you have a handful of documents you simply go and copy the data you need from PDF documents manually and paste it to Excel or anywhere you need it to be. PDF Parsers enable end-users to get data from hundreds and thousands of PDF documents in real time by saving huge amounts of time and, thus, money. Parsing pdf documents isn’t an easy task. There are various ways native pdf documents are generated and parsing data from such pdf documents requires smart approaches. Parsed data from PDF documents greatly varies depending on the industry, which means the data parsed might also greatly change, which complicates the task. Parsing PDF medical forms, which contain specific fields such as First, Middle, and Last names, Sex, Date of Birth, etc. are very different from PDF purchase orders that contain mainly the items in the tabular form with such columns as Item No, Code, Quantity, Item Price, Amount, etc. Therefore, if PDF Parser produces just a bunch of text from a PDF document it does not make much sense for the end-user. What end-users or organizations require is the structured data parsed from PDF documents. In other words, PDF Parser should extract from PDF documents only the data the end-user needs and in the right structured format. For this, the PDF Parser must be smart and flexible enough to parse PDF documents with various layouts and data types. How to parse PDF documents with various layouts? Algodocs allows you to parse PDF documents of any complexity in their layouts and type of data. With the flexible extracting rules of Algodocs, you can parse data from PDFs with different layouts. It is very easy and quick to set up extractors in Algodocs for your PDF documents. We provide 100% free technical support and are ready to set up extractors for you. While we provide free support for creating extracting rules, you may check our help and support section if you wish to learn how to create extracting rules in Algodocs. Watch the following introductory video to get an idea of how it works in Algodocs. Feel free to start a free subscription right now and parse your pdf documents. You can use Algodocs free forever with 50 pages per month. If you need to process a higher number of pages, then please see our affordable pricing plans. If you have specific requirements and need a custom solution, please contact us. You Might Also Like PDF Data Extraction: The Best Tool and Techniques PDFs are ubiquitous in every organization, serving as the go-to format for sharing and exchanging business data. However, extracting, editing, or… Shubhankar Biswas October 13, 2025 PDF Image Extraction: A Comprehensive Guide To Extracting Image Data From Scanned Pdf Files In 2025 PDF image extraction is a challenging process. Without proper tools and technology, this process can be tedious and prone to errors, which can… Shubhankar Biswas September 1, 2025 Convert PDF to JSON – Convert PDF Documents to Structured JSON Objects Table of Contents Introduction Organizations in various industries widely use PDF documents, since no doubt PDF is a common document format for… Shubhankar Biswas October 13, 2025 Start extracting your data today No credit card required. Process up to 50 pages per month on the Forever Free plan. Book a Demo Get Started for Free










