Fix a Corrupted or Damaged PDF, Free
Attempt to rebuild a damaged PDF.
Select a damaged 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 repairing a damaged PDF
A PDF can end up damaged in ways that stop it opening cleanly — an interrupted download, a broken cross-reference table (the internal index a reader uses to jump straight to each page), or a file a buggy tool half-wrote. The symptoms vary: a blank page, a reader error, pages that won't render, or a file that opens in one viewer but not another.
This tool loads the file with pdf-lib in a tolerant mode that works around common structural problems, then rewrites the PDF from what it can recover — rebuilding the cross-reference table and object structure from scratch rather than trying to patch the broken one in place. It's a genuine recovery attempt, not a placebo, but it can only rebuild from data that's actually present in the file: if the underlying bytes are truly missing or corrupted, some content may not come back.
Supported files
Accepts a PDF, including ones other viewers fail to open. Produces a rebuilt PDF with a valid internal structure.
Is my file uploaded?
No. The whole repair runs in your browser with pdf-lib — nothing is uploaded, even for a file that's already broken.
Common problems
- The repaired file still won't open, or pages are missing
- The tool can only rebuild from data that's actually recoverable — if the original bytes were truncated or overwritten, that content is genuinely gone. Try an earlier backup of the file if you have one.
How to Repair PDF
- 1
Open the tool
Open the Repair PDF 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
Run the repair
Click Repair and the tool rebuilds the file's internal structure to recover what it can.
- 3
Download the result
Preview the result, then click Download to save the finished PDF to your device.
Repair PDF — frequently asked questions
What kinds of damage can this actually fix?+
It rebuilds the file's internal object table and cross-reference index from scratch, which resolves most 'can't open this file' or 'file is damaged' errors caused by a broken xref table or a corrupted incremental save. It can't fix a file that's simply not a PDF, or recover content that was never saved in the first place.
What happens if the file is too damaged to rebuild normally?+
It falls back to rendering each page it can still read as an image and assembles those into a new PDF. You get your content back visually, but the text is no longer selectable or searchable — that trade-off only kicks in when the normal rebuild fails outright.
Is there a free way to fix a corrupted PDF that won't open?+
Yes — drop it in here. It rebuilds the file's internal structure and, if needed, falls back to a visual rebuild, free and entirely in your browser.
Is my file uploaded to repair it?+
No — the rebuild runs entirely in your browser with pdf-lib, even for a file that's already broken.
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