Crop PDF

What does cropping a PDF do?

Cropping a PDF trims unwanted space from the edges of its pages — the wide white margins around a scan, the dead border on a slide export, or the gutter left over from a two-up layout. You set how much to cut from the top, right, bottom and left, and the tool shrinks each page's visible area to match.

It does this by adjusting the page's crop box rather than erasing anything. The content you trim is hidden, not destroyed, which is what makes cropping safe and reversible. And like every PDF tool here, the work happens entirely in your browser — your document is opened on your own machine and never uploaded.

Media box vs crop box

Every PDF page has two rectangles that matter here:

• The media box is the page's true physical size — the full sheet, edge to edge. Drawing happens relative to it.
• The crop box is the window viewers and printers actually show. By default it equals the media box, so you see the whole page.

When you crop, this tool leaves the media box (and all the content drawn on it) alone and simply shrinks the crop box inward by the margins you choose. Readers then display only that smaller window. Because nothing is rewritten or recompressed, text stays selectable and images stay sharp — you've just changed where the page's visible edges sit.

A coordinate detail worth knowing: PDF pages use an origin at the bottom-left corner, not the top-left like a screen. The tool accounts for this automatically — your "top" trim is subtracted from the upper edge and your "bottom" trim raises the floor — so the crop you see in the preview is the crop you get in the file.

How to use it

1. Choose a PDF. Click Choose a PDF file. The tool reads it, shows the page count, and renders a full preview of page one.
2. Drag the sliders. Set how much to trim from each side, as a percentage. A dashed box on the preview updates live to show exactly what will be kept and what will be cut.
3. Choose the scope. Apply the crop to all pages, or switch to page range to crop only part of the document.
4. Crop and download. Click Crop & download. You get a new file named after the original with _cropped appended; your source is untouched.

No install, no account, no email.

A live preview you can trust

Guessing margins blind is frustrating, so the preview does the guessing for you. As you move each slider, a dashed rectangle marks the area that survives the crop and the trimmed margins are dimmed. Because each page's own size is respected when the crop is applied, the same percentage trim works correctly on a mixed document — A4 pages and Letter pages each lose the proportional amount, not a fixed number of points that would over- or under-cut one of them.

The preview shows page one, which is the usual reference for a consistently laid-out document. If your pages vary wildly, crop a copy first and check a few pages before relying on the result across the whole file.

When cropping helps

• Removing scan margins. Flatbed and feeder scans often leave broad white borders. Trimming them tightens the page and makes the content fill the screen. If a scan also came in sideways, our Rotate PDF tool straightens it first.
• Print preparation. Cutting dead space helps content sit correctly inside a printer's printable area, or fit a specific paper size without awkward borders.
• Cleaning up exports. Slides and posters exported to PDF sometimes carry a frame of empty space; cropping gives a clean, edge-to-edge result.
• Reading on small screens. Less margin means the actual text is larger when a page is fit to a phone or e-reader, with no extra zooming.
• Splitting two-up pages. Crop away one half to isolate a single column or panel from a side-by-side layout. To break the file into separate documents instead, our Split PDF tool does that.

Why it's non-destructive

Because cropping only moves the crop box, the trimmed content remains in the file. That has two useful consequences. First, the operation is reversible: load the cropped PDF back in, reset the margins to zero (or set the crop box to the full media box), and the original page returns. Second, you don't risk silently deleting something important at the edge — if you over-crop, the fix is to crop again with smaller margins, not to recover lost data.

If you need the trimmed area to be truly gone — for example before sharing a document where the margins contain sensitive notes — that's a different operation (flattening or re-rendering), not a crop.

Why crop in the browser?

Most online PDF croppers upload your file to a server, process it remotely, and hand it back. That's fine for a public flyer, but the wrong default for contracts, payslips, IDs, medical records or anything you wouldn't email to a stranger. Once a file leaves your device, you're trusting someone else's storage and retention.

This tool removes that trust requirement by cropping locally:

• Privacy by design — the file never leaves your device, so there's nothing to leak and nothing to delete afterwards.
• No upload wait — no round trip to a server, so even a large file crops the moment you click.
• No page cap, no daily limit — crop as many pages and documents as you like, back to back.
• No login, no watermark — no account to create, and the output is a clean PDF with nothing stamped on it.

Close the tab and nothing remains anywhere — exactly how editing a private document should work.

Tips and common mistakes

• Crop with the preview, not from memory. Drag the sliders until the dashed box hugs your content; that's faster and safer than typing guessed numbers.
• Use percentages for mixed sizes. Because the trim is proportional, one setting crops A4 and Letter pages correctly without separate runs.
• Don't over-trim. The tool blocks impossible crops (where nothing would remain), but a slightly too-aggressive crop can still clip content — leave a small safety margin.
• Use a range for inconsistent layouts. If only some pages have wide margins, crop just those rather than the whole document.
• Decrypt first. A password-protected PDF can't be modified — re-save it without protection, then crop.