Free PDF to EPUB converter

PDF to EPUB converter that gets hard PDFs right

To convert a PDF to EPUB, choose your file: epubwise rebuilds its chapters, headings and paragraphs and hands back a reflowable EPUB, free and without an account.

Convert a PDF to EPUB

  • No sign-up
  • Deleted within an hour
  • Reads scanned PDFs

Free: 10 files a day, OCR on up to 100 scanned pages a day (a pass reads up to 300 per file). Only convert files you have the right to convert. Password-protected and DRM-locked PDFs can't be converted.

Page 36 of the 1876 first edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, with the running head TOM SAWYER and an engraving captioned Showing off
Tom Sawyer

As he was passing by the house where Jeff Thatcher lived, he saw a new girl in the garden a lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow hair plaited into two long tails, white summer frock and embroidered pantalettes. The fresh-crowned hero fell without firing a shot. A certain Amy Lawrence vanished out of his heart and left not even a memory of herself behind.

Print page 35EPUB

A page of the 1876 first edition, and the same passage in the EPUB epubwise made from the whole scan: unedited output.

The difference on a real page

A sentence runs from page 35 to page 36 of the 1876 first edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a public-domain scan. Copied line by line, the running head lands in the middle of it.

The PDF
Last line of page 35: As he was passing by the house where Jeff Thatcher lived, he saw a new girl

page 36

Top of page 36: the page number, the running head TOM SAWYER, and two lines continuing the sentence
Copied line by line
As he was passing by the house where Jeff Thatcher lived, he saw a new girl TOM SA WYER. in the garden a lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow hair plaited into two long tails, white summer frock and embroidered pantalettes.
epubwise
As he was passing by the house where Jeff Thatcher lived, he saw a new girl in the garden a lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow hair plaited into two long tails, white summer frock and embroidered pantalettes.

Real, unedited output. The middle column is the scan's own text layer exactly as it comes out of the file. That layer lost the dash after "garden", so the EPUB doesn't have it either. Scan: Internet Archive.

What epubwise fixes

Each of these is a separate step in the full conversion process. The page-number, hyphen and scan examples come from the same 1876 scan.

  1. No page numbers mid-sentence

    he saw a new girl 36 TOM SAWYER. in the garden

    Running heads, footers and folios are lifted out of the text and kept as hidden page markers, so a citation to page 214 still works.

  2. Whole paragraphs

    the hap-
    piest and the proudest boy becomesthe happiest and the proudest boy, while fresh-crowned keeps its hyphen

    Paragraphs are joined across lines, columns and page breaks, and words split by a line-end hyphen are put back together.

  3. Columns, read in order

    Columns are found on every page, even when an old magazine sets them a hair apart, so each one is read to its foot before the next instead of the lines being shuffled together.

  4. Real chapters and headings

    Chapter One1Chapter Two14

    Headings are ranked by size into levels, and the book is split into chapters with a contents list you can tap.

  5. Tables and figures kept

    MeasureValue
    Width21 cm
    Height28 cm

    Ruled tables become real tables, figures keep their captions, and charts inside scans are saved as pictures.

  6. Scans read with OCR

    A printed line from the scanbecomes textAs he was passing by the house where Jeff Thatcher lived, he saw a new girl

    Image-only pages are read with OCR, and the jumbled hidden text that many scans carry is put back in reading order.

How to convert a PDF to EPUB

  1. Choose your PDF

    Use the button at the top of this page, or drag the file onto the box.

  2. Let it convert

    Most books are done in under a minute. A long scanned book can take a few minutes.

  3. Download and read

    Open the EPUB in Apple Books, Google Play Books, Kobo or any EPUB reader, or follow the steps for sending the EPUB to a Kindle.

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Questions

Is epubwise free?

Yes. You can convert up to 10 PDFs a day, each up to 250 MB and 800 pages, without signing up. The free plan limits are listed in full.

Can it convert a scanned PDF?

Yes. Pages that are only an image, or whose text layer is broken, are read with OCR (up to 100 scanned pages a day on the free plan), and maps, charts and tables in scans are kept as pictures. See converting scanned PDFs.

Can I read the EPUB on a Kindle?

Yes. Kindle accepts EPUB through Amazon's Send to Kindle service, which converts it for your device.

What happens to my file?

Your PDF is deleted as soon as it has been converted, and the EPUB is deleted within an hour. Nobody looks at your files; the privacy policy has the details.

Which PDFs can't be converted?

Password-protected and DRM-locked PDFs can't be converted. Remove the password first if the file is yours.

What doesn't it handle well yet?

Columns of running text, even three or four of them as in newspapers, are read one after another, but busy magazine spreads and forms with text boxes scattered over the page can come out in an odd order. A scan that already carries someone else's OCR text keeps that text's mistakes, such as a lost dash, unless the text is unreadable and epubwise reads the page again. Always keep your original PDF.

Why doesn't the EPUB look exactly like the PDF?

Because it isn't meant to. An EPUB lets your reader choose the font, size and margins and reflows the text to fit the screen. Page-exact layouts such as magazines or comics are better kept as PDF.

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