Repair PDF Online - Fix Corrupted Files

We use PDF repair algorithms to attempt to fix corruption issues. The tool tries to recover readable pages and data from the corrupted PDF, creating a new repaired version.

We can attempt to repair PDFs with structural corruption, missing or damaged page data, and some formatting issues. Severely corrupted files may not be fully recoverable.

While we do our best to repair corrupted PDFs, not all types of corruption can be fixed. The success depends on the extent and type of damage. We'll recover what we can, but some data loss may occur.

In some cases, severely corrupted pages may not be recoverable and will be skipped. We'll preserve all pages that can be successfully recovered. The repaired PDF may have fewer pages than the original if some pages were too damaged.

The tool handles structural damage best: broken cross-reference tables, damaged object references, malformed trailers, files that were not closed properly during saving, and PDFs that some viewers refuse to open even though most of the data is intact. It recovers what is still present in the file — it cannot reconstruct data that is missing.

If the underlying data is gone, no tool can bring it back. Files truncated during download, files whose bytes were overwritten, encrypted files where the encryption data itself is damaged, and files that were never valid PDFs to begin with usually cannot be recovered. Repair restores structure around surviving content; it does not recreate lost content.

No, and any tool that promises a 100% success rate is overselling. Success depends on how much of the original data survived. BlendPDF recovers everything it can and returns a rebuilt file, but severely damaged files may come back incomplete or may fail to repair at all.

Possibly. If individual pages are too damaged to read, the fallback recovery skips them and keeps the rest, so the repaired PDF may have fewer pages than the original. When the primary qpdf repair succeeds, all pages are usually preserved. Always open the repaired file and check it against what you expected.

Upload the damaged PDF (up to 50MB) by dragging it onto the page or clicking Choose File, then click Repair PDF. Processing usually takes a few seconds to a couple of minutes depending on file size. When it finishes, download the repaired copy. No account or email is required.

Yes, it is completely free. There is no watermark on the output, no page limit, no daily quota that pushes you to a paid plan, and no sign-up. The repaired file is your document, rebuilt — nothing is added to it.

Yes. Files travel over an encrypted HTTPS connection and are deleted from our servers within one hour, most immediately after processing. We never read, store, or share the contents of your documents, and no account is needed. We use Google Analytics for aggregate, anonymous usage measurement only — never your document contents.

One PDF per operation, up to 50MB. Repair is limited to 20 files per 15 minutes per user. Corrupted files sometimes cannot be compressed first, so if your file is over 50MB, try recovering it from its original source instead.

Common causes are interrupted downloads or uploads, emailing a file that gets cut off, crashes while an application is saving, failing storage drives or USB sticks, and software that writes non-standard PDF structures. If a file keeps arriving corrupted, re-export it from the source application rather than repairing each copy.

Not directly. If the file opens with a password but misbehaves, remove the password first with the Unlock PDF tool, then repair the unlocked copy. If the encryption data itself is corrupted, the file usually cannot be recovered, because the contents are unreadable without intact encryption structures.

Repair works on scanned PDFs the same way it works on any PDF: it recovers the file structure and the page images inside it. It does not perform OCR, so a scanned PDF stays a set of images and its text will not become selectable or searchable after repair. Run the repaired file through the BlendPDF OCR tool if you need its text to become searchable.

Try re-downloading or re-exporting the file from its original source, check email or cloud storage for an earlier intact copy, look for previous versions in your backup or file-history tools, or ask the sender to resend it. If several independent tools cannot open the file, the data is most likely gone.

Adobe Acrobat quietly rebuilds mildly damaged files when it opens them, but it has no dedicated repair button and requires a paid license for editing features. BlendPDF gives you an explicit repair step, is free, and runs in the browser with nothing to install. For severe corruption, neither approach can recover data that no longer exists in the file.

Check that the file is under 50MB and actually a PDF — renaming a .docx to .pdf does not make it one. If you see a "too many requests" message, wait a few minutes; the limit is 20 files per 15 minutes. If a repair fails outright, the file is likely damaged beyond what automated recovery can do.