May 10, 2026 · Repair PDF
How To Repair A Corrupt Or Damaged PDF
A PDF that won't open is one of the most frustrating files to receive. The download finished. The file is there on disk. The reader just refuses to open it.
Repair PDF tries to recover the file. It rebuilds the cross-reference table, recovers what can be salvaged, and produces a working PDF where possible.
What Repair Can And Can't Fix
Common breakages we can fix: corrupt cross-reference tables, mis-encoded object streams, missing trailers, malformed structure that nonetheless contains valid page content. These are typical symptoms of a download that completed but truncated incorrectly, or a PDF generator that produced slightly off-spec output.
What we can't fix: severely truncated files (where pages are physically missing), partially overwritten files (where content has been replaced with garbage), or files that were never PDFs to begin with. In those cases, we report the failure clearly instead of returning a silent half-broken result.
How To Repair
Upload the broken file to Repair PDF. Click Repair. The file is processed on a Lambda worker running qpdf in repair mode. If recovery succeeds, you get a working PDF. If it fails, you get a clear explanation of why.
Encrypted Broken PDFs
If the broken PDF was also password-protected, decrypt it first with Unlock PDF, then run Repair. Repair on an encrypted file usually fails because the decryption layer prevents proper structural analysis.
Privacy
The broken file is uploaded over HTTPS, processed in an isolated worker, and deleted within 24 hours. We never inspect contents.
Got a PDF that won't open? Try Repair PDF before declaring the file dead. Free up to 3 repairs per day.