Free PDF Password Recovery

A PDF password remover (also called a PDF password cracker, password reset, or password recovery tool, depending on its ability) is a program that can be used to either find, remove, or bypass the security on a PDF file that prevents you from opening, printing, or changing the PDF file.

Most PDF password cracker tools fall in to one or more of three major categories: tools that recover the PDF user password, tools that recover the PDF owner password, and tools that remove the PDF owner password allowing full access to the PDF file.

The majority of PDF password remover tools cost money but there are also plenty of free PDF password removal, recovery, and cracking programs and the best of them are listed below:

Note: An individual PDF password removal tool might only support the cracking or removing of a password if it's of a certain kind, for a certain security level, encrypting a certain version of PDF, or may even have other restrictions. I'll call out any of those known limits below.

Important: In most countries, the only legal use of PDF password crackers is to break the security on a PDF file that you have the permission to do so on, like a PDF you encrypted but forgot the password to.

Need to Crack a Different Kind of Password? See my list of free password crackers for free programs to crack Windows passwords, RAR and ZIP archives, Word and Excel files, and more.

PDFCrack is the best free PDF password recovery tool available, assuming that's what you're after - an actual password "recovery" and not a simple PDF password removal or reset.

Method: PDFCrack would be considered a true PDF password recovery program since it recovers both the user password and owner password from encrypted PDFs. PDFCrack uses a brute-force password recovery method.

Limits: PDFCrack works with PDF files up to version 1.6 with 128-bit RC4 encryption.

My Test: PDFCrack recovered the 4-digit owner password on a version 1.6 PDF file with 128-bit RC4 encryption in two minutes. A longer and/or more complicated PDF password could take days, weeks, or even longer to recover.

If all you need is a way to bypass the permissions security in a PDF then PDFCrack is probably more than you need in a PDF password cracker. However, if you need to know the actual owner or user password, PDFCrack is your best bet.

PDFCrack is a command-line tool and should work on Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP, including both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.