PDF is a frozen page layout with no heading structure a machine can rely on. RTF is rich text that almost every word processor ever written can open. calibre sits between the two, and this page says exactly what happens to a PDF file on the way to becoming an RTF one.
What runs when a PDF file becomes RTF
calibre the ebook-convert binary, on a machine we rent and watch. Your PDF file is uploaded once, calibre runs once, the RTF comes back, and neither file is kept. PDF to RTF is one of the 3649 pairs that engine was probed on with a real file, which is why it has a page here and why the pairs the probe could not prove do not.
What survives from the PDF into the RTF
The reading order and the chapter split of the PDF file. calibre rebuilds it as a book on the way to RTF, rather than as a pile of pages.
Cover art and book metadata, which calibre carries from the PDF container into the RTF one.
What PDF to RTF costs you
Fixed layout. calibre reflows the PDF text by design, because an RTF is meant to be read at any font size on any screen width.
Anything the PDF did not spell out. calibre reads the text layer of the PDF file; a scanned page has no text layer, so a scanned PDF comes back as an empty RTF, and no engine on this machine can warn you beforehand.
Where PDF and RTF files come from
RTF. Almost everything can write it, and that is the point: an RTF is plain text you can open in a text editor and read. It was the interchange format before there was an open standard, and it survives in exports from software too old or too small to ship anything better.
If a model is going to read the RTF
Structure is what survives from the PDF file, and structure is what a model needs. PDF in, RTF out, with the heading tree intact instead of flattened into one long paragraph.
PDF to RTF, measured rather than promised
Running PDF to RTF against the real engine with a real file, calibre wrote 99,461 bytes of RTF in 0.8 seconds, machine otherwise idle. That is one PDF file on one day and not an average, which is why the number is given together with the file that produced it.
The PDF to RTF verdict was reached by a format signature, meaning at least four bytes unique to the format were found at the right offset. Which check was used matters, because they do not all prove the same thing, and a status code of 200 proves nothing whatsoever about whether the RTF file has anything inside it.
The same PDF file, sent somewhere else
Other outputs the probe measured out of a PDF file, so the cost of choosing RTF can be read against something. Sizes do not compare across engines, because each family was probed with its own PDF witness file.
PDF to DOCX: 23,905 bytes in 0.9 seconds, verified by a format signature.
PDF to EPUB: 26,909 bytes in 0.9 seconds, verified by a format signature.
PDF to JPG: 5,782 bytes in 0.1 seconds, verified by a format signature.
PDF to PNG: 1,294 bytes in 0.1 seconds, verified by a format signature.
PDF to WEBP: 906 bytes in 0.1 seconds, verified by a format signature.
PDF to TXT: 219 bytes in 0.8 seconds, verified by reading the text back.
Other ways into RTF, and what they measured
Among the published routes into RTF, PDF is the first largest output of the 11 measured. The witness files differ, so this ranks the probe run and not your document.
DOC to RTF: 4,321 bytes in 1.1 seconds.
DOCX to RTF: 4,205 bytes in 1.1 seconds.
AZW3 to RTF: 2,512 bytes in 0.6 seconds.
CSV to RTF: 779 bytes in under a tenth of a second.
HTML to RTF: 775 bytes in under a tenth of a second.
What we will not pretend about PDF to RTF
A PDF file over 50 MB is refused before the upload finishes rather than after it, so you do not wait for a rejection.
A PDF to RTF run that passes 120 seconds is killed, and the calibre process is killed with it. A run left behind would sit on one of the machine's two cores until somebody noticed.
The PDF file used to prove this pair was short. calibre is allowed 120 seconds and a long book can genuinely need all of them, so the RTF timing below is a measurement of one small file and not a guarantee about your thousand page one.
One PDF file at a time, chosen in the browser. There is nothing else to set up and nothing else on offer.
PDF to RTF: what people ask
What actually converts my PDF file to RTF?
calibre does it, the ebook-convert binary, on a machine we rent and watch. Not a browser trick and not somebody else service: the PDF file is uploaded once, calibre runs once, the RTF comes back, and neither file is kept afterwards.
How long does PDF to RTF take?
On the file the probe used, calibre took 0.8 seconds and wrote 99,461 bytes of RTF. That is one real measurement on one real PDF file, not an average and not a promise about yours: a larger PDF takes longer, and past 120 seconds the run is stopped.
What do I lose going from PDF to RTF?
The one to know about first: Fixed layout. calibre reflows the PDF text by design, because an RTF is meant to be read at any font size on any screen width.
Does the table of contents survive from PDF to RTF?
It does, as long as your PDF file has real headings rather than text that merely looks like headings. calibre builds the RTF contents from the heading structure it finds, and hand-formatted big bold lines are not a structure.
Is PDF to RTF free?
There is a free allowance every month, and one PDF to RTF conversion costs half a credit against it. When the allowance runs out the tool says so and stops, rather than quietly handing you a worse RTF.