Quick answer
- Open the Crop PDF tool and upload your file.
- Drag the crop box to the area you want to keep.
- Apply the crop to one page or all pages, then download.
Cropping vs. other PDF edits
It's easy to confuse cropping with resizing or splitting, but they do different things:
- Cropping trims the visible area of a page — the content outside the crop box is hidden, not deleted.
- Resizing changes the overall page dimensions (like A4 to Letter) without trimming content — see how to resize a PDF.
- Splitting separates whole pages from each other — see how to split a PDF.
Common reasons to crop a PDF
- Removing the dark border a flatbed scanner leaves around a scanned page.
- Cutting down wide margins so content reads bigger on a phone or tablet screen.
- Removing a header, footer, or watermark that sits in a consistent spot on every page.
- Preparing a page to be inserted into another document at a specific size.
Cropping doesn't reduce file size
Because cropping only changes what's displayed, not the underlying image or text data, it usually won't make your file meaningfully smaller. If your goal is a smaller file, use Compress PDF instead.
Crop your file now
The PDFGuy Crop PDF tool runs entirely in your browser, for free, with your file never leaving your device.