Convert a PDF to Black and White, Free
Convert every page to black & white to cut colour-ink cost when printing.
Select a PDF
Click to choose, or drop a file here
You can also paste (Ctrl+V / Cmd+V)
Most tools run entirely on your device
Advertisement
About converting a PDF to greyscale
Printing a colour PDF on a black-and-white printer usually still prints it as though it were colour — the printer just renders each colour as its own shade of grey, which can look muddy and costs the same in toner as colour printing on many machines. Converting to true greyscale ahead of time fixes both: cleaner output, and a file that prints for the price of black-and-white.
The tool re-renders every page as a greyscale image via pdf.js and rebuilds the PDF from those pages with pdf-lib, entirely in your browser. Because it works by re-rendering rather than editing colours in place, the result is genuinely single-channel greyscale — but that also means text and vector graphics on the original page become flattened images, so they're no longer selectable text afterward. Keep the colour original if you need to edit or copy text later.
Supported files
Accepts a PDF. Produces a PDF where every page is a greyscale image — selectable text is not preserved.
Is my file uploaded?
No. The whole conversion runs in your browser with pdf.js and pdf-lib — nothing is uploaded.
How to PDF to Grayscale
- 1
Open the tool
Open the PDF to Grayscale tool and drop your file onto the page, or click to browse for it. Everything runs in your browser — the file is never uploaded.
- 2
Convert to black & white
Click Convert — every page is re-rendered without colour.
- 3
Download the grayscale PDF
Download the black-and-white file, ready for cheaper printing.
PDF to Grayscale — frequently asked questions
Is the original colour recoverable?+
No. Each page is re-rendered without colour and the document is rebuilt from those flat images, so text and vectors also become images. Keep your colour original if you'll need it.
Will this make the file smaller?+
Usually yes, since colour data is dropped, but it's not a compression tool — use Compress PDF or Compress to Target Size if size is the goal.
Is there a free way to convert a PDF to black and white?+
Yes — every page is converted to greyscale, free and entirely in your browser, useful for saving colour ink when printing.
Does this work the same as just printing in black and white?+
The effect looks similar, but this actually converts the file's pixels — the PDF itself becomes greyscale, rather than a printer converting it on the fly, so it looks the same on any printer or screen.
Do you upload my files to a server?+
No — every tool here processes your files entirely on your device, and nothing is uploaded to a server. The only exception is the AI tools, which send the extracted text (not the file) to Claude to do their work.
Is there a file size limit?+
There's no artificial limit we impose, but since processing happens in your browser, very large files (500+ MB or 1,000+ pages) are limited by your device's memory rather than by us.
Advertisement