Chat with PDF Locally Free — Private Browser AI

Chat with any PDF locally in your browser using private AI. Extract text, search passages, and get instant answers with page citations. 100% private — files are never uploaded.

About Chat with PDF

Chat with PDF lets you ask questions about a PDF and get answers with page references, using AI models that run inside your browser. Short factual questions are often answered instantly with a quoted sentence from the document; longer questions, summaries, lists and tables go to a small local language model. It can also find tables in the PDF and export them to Excel or CSV.

How to use Chat with PDF

1. Open a PDF. The tool extracts its text, splits it into overlapping passages of about 450 characters, and indexes them with a small search model (about 23 MB, downloaded once).
2. Ask a question, or tap a suggestion such as Summarize this document or List the important dates and numbers.
3. For short factual questions, an exact sentence from the PDF appears first, tagged with its page. Use Explain with AI if you want the model's answer as well.
4. For other questions, the most relevant passages are sent to the local language model, Qwen2.5 0.5B Instruct. The first time, this downloads roughly 790 MB on WebGPU-capable devices or about 510 MB on others.
5. Tap the Page buttons under an answer to see the passage it was drawn from, and check important answers against the document.
6. Use Extract tables to list tables found on the pages and download them as an Excel workbook or a CSV.

When it helps

Finding a clause in a long agreement

Questions like 'Is there a notice period?' or 'What is the security deposit?' jump straight to the right passage of a 40-page lease, with the page number to read in full.

Reading confidential documents you cannot upload

Company policies, medical reports and financial statements often may not be pasted into online AI services. Here the document is processed entirely on the device.

Pulling tables out of reports

Fee schedules, price lists and financial tables in digital PDFs can be exported to Excel without retyping, one sheet per table.

Getting the gist before a meeting

A summary request samples passages from across the whole document rather than one section, which is useful for a quick orientation before reading properly.

Tips

• Ask specific questions using words the document is likely to contain. Search matches meaning, but 'termination notice period' finds a clause faster than 'how do I get out of this'.
• Treat answers as pointers, not conclusions. The model is small, can misread figures and can merge details from two passages; the page citations are there so you can verify.
• Download the models on Wi-Fi. After that, they are cached by the browser and the tool works offline.
• If answers stall or the tab crashes, close other heavy tabs. The language model needs several hundred megabytes of memory.
• Previously opened PDFs are remembered on this device, so reopening the same file skips indexing. Remove them from Saved PDFs on this device when you no longer need them.

Limitations

• Scanned PDFs with no text layer cannot be indexed; the tool says so and asks for an OCR'd copy.
• Only about 2,400 characters of the most relevant passages are given to the model per question, so questions that need the whole document at once, like comparing every clause, get partial answers. Summaries likewise sample the document.
• Quality is well below large cloud models. Expect occasional wrong numbers, incomplete lists and awkward phrasing, especially for non-English documents.
• The first use needs a large one-time download and a reasonably modern device; low-memory phones may not be able to run the language model.
• Table detection relies on text lined up in columns. Tables drawn as images, or with merged and wrapped cells, may be missed or split oddly.

What happens to your files

Text extraction, indexing, search and answer generation all run in your browser; the PDF and your questions are never uploaded. The only network use is downloading the two open models (all-MiniLM-L6-v2 for search and Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct for answers) from Hugging Face at pinned versions, which the browser keeps in Cache Storage for later offline use. The document's passages and their search vectors are stored in an IndexedDB database on your device so reopening the file is instant; you can delete saved documents from the tool, or clear all of it by clearing site data.

Related guides

• How to Scan Documents to PDF with Your Phone
• How to Extract Text from Scanned PDFs & Photos with In-Browser OCR

Chat with Any PDF Locally Using Browser AI

File Studio's Chat with PDF feature uses 100% browser-based AI to analyze and answer questions about your PDF documents. Upload any PDF file to extract text passages, generate vector embeddings, and search content locally. Zero bytes are uploaded to cloud servers, ensuring complete privacy for confidential business contracts, financial statements, and personal records.

Page-Aware Passages & Accurate Citations

Answers come with page-number source buttons (such as Page 18) for the passages they were drawn from. Clicking a citation displays the exact text snippet extracted from that page. This allows you to verify facts instantly and jump straight to the source material within your document.

WebGPU Accelerated & Offline Capable

The embedding model (ONNX MiniLM) and chat model (Qwen2.5 Instruct) run directly on your hardware via WebGPU acceleration or WASM fallback. Once downloaded, models are cached locally in your browser for instant offline use. Indexed document vectors are persisted in IndexedDB, allowing you to reopen and chat with previously processed PDFs without re-embedding.

Frequently asked questions

Does my PDF get uploaded to any server?

No. Text extraction, chunking, embeddings and question answering all run in your browser, and the index is kept in your browser's IndexedDB. The only downloads are the two AI models from Hugging Face on first use; your PDF is never uploaded.

How does Chat with PDF work locally?

Your browser extracts text from the PDF using PDF.js, splits it into page-aware passages, computes vector embeddings locally using ONNX MiniLM, and uses local AI to answer your questions.

Are my files uploaded to a server?

No. File Studio is built on a strict local-first architecture. Every PDF operation — merging, splitting, compressing, redacting — runs entirely inside your browser using JavaScript. Your files never leave your computer. You can even disconnect your internet after the page loads and the tools will continue working perfectly.

Is File Studio completely free?

Yes, 100% free with no limits. There are no file size caps, no daily limits, no watermarks added to your output, and no account or email required. All tools are free forever.

Does it work on mobile and tablet?

Yes. File Studio is fully responsive and works on Android and iOS browsers. All processing happens locally on your phone's or tablet's hardware.

Related tools

• PDF Info — See hidden properties
• Page Numbers — Number every page
• Extract Text — Copy text out of PDFs
• Remove Metadata — Strip author and dates