Use Case

Convert PDF to CSV API

Get the text of any public PDF URL as CSV - one row per page, with the page number and that page's text. Ready to import into spreadsheets, databases, and data pipelines. This is page text, not table extraction.

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When is CSV the right format?

Plenty of tools only speak CSV: spreadsheet imports, bulk database loaders, ETL jobs, and no-code automations that want rows. If you need a document's text in one of those, a JSON document is the wrong shape and plain text loses the page boundaries.

PDFPipe's CSV output gives you one row per page with two columns: page_number and text_content. Cells are quoted and escaped per RFC 4180, so multi-line page text survives the round trip into Excel, Google Sheets, pandas, or a COPY into Postgres.

To be clear about what this is not: PDFPipe does not detect tables inside a PDF. Tables come out as the text of the page they sit on, in the order the PDF stores it. If you need a table's cells as columns, pass the page text to your own parser or an LLM. It works with any public PDF URL, including auto-download triggers and redirect chains.

How it works

One POST request. We handle the rest.

1. Send a request

curl

curl -X POST https://api.pdfpipe.dev/v1/convert \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer pk_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://example.com/financial-report.pdf",
    "format": "csv",
    "returnMethod": "inline"
  }'

2. Get the response

JSON response

{
  "requestId": "req_a1b2c3...",
  "status": "complete",
  "format": "csv",
  "pagesProcessed": 8,
  "creditsUsed": 1,
  "contentType": "text/csv",
  "content": "page_number,text_content\n1,\"QUARTERLY FINANCIAL REPORT\nQ4 2025...\"\n2,\"Executive Summary...\"\n..."
}

One row per page, properly quoted

Two columns, a header row, and one data row per page. Import directly into Excel, Google Sheets, pandas, or any database that accepts CSV.

Header row: page_number,text_content
One row per page, in page order
RFC 4180 quoting: commas, quotes, and newlines inside cells are escaped
Optional pages parameter to export a range (max 100 pages)
Same output whether the PDF was inline or an attachment

Sample CSV output

page_number,text_content
1,"QUARTERLY FINANCIAL REPORT
Q4 2025

Prepared by: Acme Corp
Date: January 15, 2026"
2,"Executive Summary

Revenue for Q4 2025 reached $4.2M, a 23% increase
over the previous quarter."
3,"Key Metrics
Revenue            $4,200,000
Operating Margin   18.5%"

Node.js

import { parse } from "csv-parse/sync";

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.pdfpipe.dev/v1/convert",
  {
    method: "POST",
    headers: {
      "Authorization": "Bearer pk_...",
      "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    body: JSON.stringify({
      url: "https://example.com/financial-report.pdf",
      format: "csv",
      returnMethod: "inline",
    }),
  }
);

const data = await response.json();

// Rows are { page_number, text_content }. Cells contain newlines,
// so use a real CSV parser rather than splitting on "\n".
const rows = parse(data.content, { columns: true });

for (const row of rows) {
  console.log(row.page_number, row.text_content.length, "chars");
}

Works with any language

PDFPipe is a standard REST API. If your language can make HTTP requests, it can turn PDFs into CSV. No SDK required - there is an official TypeScript/Node.js SDK (pdfpipe-sdk) and an MCP server if you want them.

JavaScriptPythonGoRubyPHPJavaC#curl

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