Splitting a PDF means extracting some or all pages into separate documents. Common uses: extracting a single page from a multi-page scan, splitting a large report into sections for different recipients, separating contract pages that need individual signatures, or pulling out appendices.
Types of PDF splitting
Split into individual pages: produces one PDF per page. A ten-page PDF becomes ten one-page PDFs. This is useful when each page is a separate document (individual forms, individual receipts, individual ID pages) that needs to be handled independently.
Extract a page range: select pages 3 to 7, get a PDF containing only those pages. This is useful for extracting a chapter, a section, or a portion of a larger document.
Split at specific pages: divide the document at page 5, get two PDFs — pages 1-5 and pages 6 onwards. Useful for splitting a combined document back into its original parts when they were merged earlier.
On-device splitting — no upload
Filum's Split PDF tool runs entirely in your browser. The PDF is loaded into the page using a PDF processing library, pages are selected and re-packaged into new PDF documents, and the output is downloaded to your device. Nothing is uploaded to a server — the whole operation happens locally.
For confidential documents — legal contracts, medical records, financial statements — this is the safest splitting method. There is no server to intercept, log, or temporarily store your document.
Splitting vs. extracting vs. organizing
Split PDF: takes a single PDF and produces multiple PDFs by dividing it. Splitting is the right tool when you want to separate a document into parts.
Extract images: pulls the embedded image content out of a PDF (JPEGs, PNGs embedded in the PDF structure). This is for recovering the source images from a PDF, not for working with PDF pages.
Organize PDF: reorder, delete, and rearrange pages within a single PDF, producing one output document. Use this when you want to rearrange a document rather than divide it.