About
About this site
pdfplumber is one of the most-used PDF libraries in Python, and its documentation is a single README. This site adds what a README cannot: task-by-task guides, figures drawn from pdfplumber's own output, measured comparisons, and tools that run the real library in your browser.
Why this site exists
pdfplumber is downloaded tens of millions of times a month from PyPI, yet people who search for help end up in Stack Overflow threads from 2019, blog posts written for older versions, and vendor articles that steer them towards a product. We wanted one place that answers every common pdfplumber question correctly for the current version, and shows its working.
How we test
- Every code example is executed. Code shown on a page lives in our repository as a script, runs against pdfplumber 0.11.10 and pdfminer.six 20260107, and the output you see is the captured output. A page cannot be published if one of its examples fails.
- On three operating systems. The same examples run again on Linux, Windows and macOS with Python 3.10 to 3.14 in GitHub Actions; the few that need Tesseract, Ghostscript or a Unix shell run where those are installed. Install commands, timings, sizes and error messages on the install and error pages come from those runs.
- Figures are pdfplumber’s own output. Interactive page figures draw the exact chars, words, edges and cells that pdfplumber reports; nothing is mocked up.
- Benchmarks state their method. Machine, versions, scripts and dates are published with every number (example).
- Sample PDFs have known contents. Most examples use fictional PDFs we generate, so results can be checked against the data they were made from. Real-world examples use public-domain US government documents from pdfplumber’s own test suite.
Corrections and updates
When pdfplumber or pdfminer.six releases a new version, we re-run every example and benchmark and update pages whose output changed. If you find something wrong, email hello@pdfplumber.dev with the page and what you saw; we reproduce the problem and fix confirmed errors quickly.
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| 2026-11-04 | Site launched, covering pdfplumber 0.11.10 and pdfminer.six 20260107. |
Reuse
- Sample PDFs in
/samples/(except/samples/real/) are fictional and released under CC0: use them for anything. - Code examples on this site are released under CC0 as well; copy them into your projects without attribution.
- Real-world PDFs in
/samples/real/are US government works in the public domain, copied from pdfplumber’s test suite. - Text and figures are © pdfplumber.dev; quote and link freely.
Contact
hello@pdfplumber.dev. See contact for what to include.