Crop PDF
Scanned documents come with wide white borders, slides come with dead space, ebooks come with margins made for print. This tool trims them: set how much to cut from the top, bottom, left and right as simple percentages, and every page gets the same clean crop. Nothing is re rendered, so quality never changes, and your file never leaves your browser.
Last updated: October 22, 2026
The formula
Your PDF is loaded in memory and the width and height of every page are read.The margin percentages you typed are converted into points on each page (for example, 10% of a 612pt-wide page is 61.2pt).Each page gets a new crop box inset from its edges by your margins, content outside the box is hidden, not deleted.The document is re-saved locally and offered as cropped.pdf, no re-rendering, so nothing in the pages changes at all.
A worked example
A scanned handout with wide white borders: set all four margins to 12%, press Crop PDF, and download cropped.pdf with every page trimmed neatly to the content.
More about the Crop PDF
Cropping margins without resizing the page
Picture a scanned handout with wide white borders on every page. Select the file, type 12 into all four margin boxes, press Crop PDF. You download cropped.pdf: every page now starts where the content starts, the text is bigger on screen, and printing it wastes far less paper. Nothing else changed, the scan quality, the file size and the page count are all identical, because the pages were never re rendered.
The most satisfying use is ebooks on a tablet. Print designed PDFs carry generous margins that shrink the text on a small screen; a 10% crop on all sides noticeably enlarges the reading area. Slide decks are the second win: exported slides often sit in a sea of white, and cropping tightens them for embedding in documents. Third: scans. Flatbed scanners capture the whole bed, borders included, and cropping is the fastest cleanup there is.
What survives cropping (and what doesn't)
Two practical tips. First, start conservative, 10% all round, and increase only if borders remain. Over cropping a scan can clip page numbers or edge notes, and while you can re crop from the original, you cannot un crop. Second, check opposite pairs: on a tall narrow scan you may need 15% left and right but only 5% top and bottom. Asymmetric margins are the norm, not the exception.
The limitations are simple and worth stating once: one margin set applies to the whole document, so mixed layout files need the split crop merge dance; cropped away content is hidden rather than deleted, so this is not a privacy tool; and encrypted PDFs are refused. Within that, it is instant, lossless and unlimited, the rare edit that cannot damage your file.
Cropping scanned pages and skewed documents
Scans are where cropping earns its keep. A scanned letter usually arrives with a black border from the scanner bed, sometimes slightly rotated. Cropping the black edges first makes the page look instantly professional; if the scan is skewed, straightening matters more than cropping, a crooked crop looks worse than no crop. For multi page scans, check a middle page too: scanners sometimes shift the paper between pages, and a crop box tuned for page one can clip text on page seven.
One more scan specific tip: cropping doesn't reduce file size the way people expect. The hidden pixels outside the crop box are still stored in the file (that is what makes cropping reversible), so a cropped 50MB scan is still roughly a 50MB file. If your goal is a smaller file for email, crop first for looks, then run it through a compression tool. The two operations solve different problems, appearance versus size, and the order matters.
Points, inches and percentages on one Letter page
A US Letter page is 612 by 792 points, and there are 72 points in an inch, so trimming half an inch from every edge means removing 36 points per side. The visible page becomes 540 points wide and 720 points tall, which is 7.5 by 10 inches. In area terms the page drops from 484,704 square points to 388,800, a reduction of about 19.8 percent, which is why cropped text feels so much larger on a phone screen afterwards.
Percentage margins behave slightly differently from fixed trims, because each side takes its share of that side’s own dimension. Ten percent off the left and 10 percent off the right removes 20 percent of the width, but 10 percent off the top removes 10 percent of the height, a longer measurement on a portrait page. That is why the same percentage in all four boxes trims more paper from the top and bottom than from the sides, and why your first test page deserves a careful look.
Cropping for a screen is not cropping for a printer
If the cropped file will only ever be read on screens, be bold. E readers, tablets, and phones reward every point of margin you remove with larger, easier text, and nothing physical constrains how close content can run to the edge. Crop close to the text block, keep page numbers only if you actually navigate by them, and enjoy a scanned book that finally fills the display it is read on.
If the file is headed for a printer, leave breathing room. Home and office printers cannot print to the very edge of the sheet, and an aggressive crop that looks perfect on screen can push lines of text into the unprintable band, where they are silently clipped. For print bound files, keep a modest margin on every side, print one representative page first, and only tighten the crop further if that test page comes out clean.
Test three pages before you commit the whole file
The most common cropping disappointment is not a wrong number but an uneven document. Scanned books drift: the left-hand pages sit a little differently from the right-hand pages, a chapter opener carries a huge decorative margin, and one folded page was scanned at a slight angle. One set of margins applied across all of that produces a file where most pages look perfect and a stubborn minority lose a line or keep a black edge.
So judge a crop by its worst pages, not its best. Check the first page, the widest page you can find, and one page from deep in the document where scanning drift is worst. If page numbers matter to you, confirm they survive on all three, because numbers sit closer to the edge than any body text. Two minutes of checking three pages is cheaper than discovering a clipped footer after you have deleted the original download.
How to use the Crop PDF
- Click Select PDF file and choose one PDF document.
- Type the margins to trim as percentages, Top, Bottom, Left and Right (0 to 40 each).
- The crop applies to all pages of the document automatically.
- Press Crop PDF and wait for the crop to finish.
- Click Download PDF to save cropped.pdf to your device.
Frequently asked questions
Does cropping actually delete the trimmed off content?
No, and that distinction matters. Cropping sets a new visible crop box on each page; the content outside it is hidden, not removed. The file still contains it, and a determined person with a PDF editor can reveal it. If you need content truly gone, signatures, account numbers, use a redaction tool, not a crop.
Can I crop pages individually, or is it all pages at once?
All pages at once with one set of margins. That is the right behaviour for scanned documents and slide decks, where every page has the same borders. For mixed layouts, split the pages that need a different crop into a separate file, crop each part on its own, and merge everything back together.
What margin values am I allowed to use?
Each margin accepts 0 to 40 percent, and each opposite pair, top plus bottom, left plus right, must total under 90 percent, so a visible page area always remains. At least one margin must be above zero, otherwise there is nothing to crop.
Will cropping change the quality of my PDF?
No. Cropping only changes the page box metadata; pages are never re rendered. Text stays selectable, images keep their resolution, and the file size barely moves. It is the gentlest possible edit.
My PDF is password protected. Can I crop it?
No. Encrypted PDFs cannot be opened by the tool. You will see an honest error. Remove the password first with the owner password, then crop normally.
Can I undo cropping if I cut off too much?
Not after you save the file, so keep a copy of your original PDF before you crop. That way you can always start over if a page comes out tighter than you intended. It also helps to preview your margin percentages on a few pages first, especially with mixed layout documents.
Will cropping a PDF make the file smaller?
Only slightly, if at all. Cropping mostly redefines each page's visible area rather than deleting the underlying content, so the file size barely moves. If you need a meaningfully lighter file, pair cropping with our Compress PDF tool — together they give you a clean, compact document.
How do I remove white margins from a PDF?
Open the PDF in the crop tool and drag the crop box to exclude the white margins. Apply to all pages at once if the whole document has the same issue.
Can cropping turn my PDF into a different paper size, like A5?
Not exactly, and the distinction matters. Cropping shrinks the visible page box by trimming margins, so the content keeps its original size and simply sits in a smaller window. Resizing to a true A5 page would scale the content itself down. If a form demands an exact paper size, you need a resize or print-to-size step. If you simply want the margins gone, cropping is the right and simpler operation.
Will cropping remove headers, footers and page numbers?
Only if they fall inside the area you trim away. Headers, footers, and page numbers live in the margins by design, so an aggressive crop can take the page numbers and footers while leaving headers untouched, or the reverse, depending on which edges you cut deepest. If those elements matter, for example in a thesis or a legal bundle, crop gently and check a page where all of them appear before committing.