PDFSwift › EPUB tools › EPUB to TXT
📄 EPUBFree · runs in your browserConvert EPUB to TXT Online (Plain Text)
Turn an EPUB into a single plain-text file in the book’s reading order. The conversion happens in your browser, the output is UTF-8, and Arabic, Hebrew, Cyrillic and CJK text pass through unchanged.
Drop an EPUB here
or choose a file from your device
What this tool does
Plain text is the lowest common denominator for books: it opens in every editor, it can be searched with any tool, it can be fed to a text-to-speech program or a language-learning app, and it survives for decades. Converting an EPUB to TXT strips the formatting and keeps the words.
The converter walks the book’s reading order, takes each content document, and writes headings, paragraphs, list items and block quotations on their own lines. Table cells are separated with a vertical bar, line breaks inside paragraphs are preserved, and HTML entities such as — are decoded into real characters.
Formatting such as bold, italics and images has no equivalent in plain text. Images are replaced by their alternative text in square brackets when the book provides it. If you need to keep emphasis and headings, use EPUB to Markdown instead.
How to use this tool
- Choose your EPUB with the file picker or drag it onto the page.
- There are no options for this tool: the output always contains every section of the reading order, preceded by the title and author.
- Press Convert to TXT. A preview of the first 3,000 characters appears, together with a chapter and word count.
- Press Download TXT to save
your-book.txt. - Open the file in a text editor and check the chapter breaks. If a book seems to be missing text, run the validator to see whether some chapters are not in its reading order.
Supported formats and limitations
- Input: EPUB 2 and EPUB 3.
- Output: UTF-8
.txt, chapters separated by three blank lines. - Kept: paragraph and heading boundaries, lists, table rows, quotations and all letters of any script.
- Dropped: bold/italic, fonts, colours, page numbers, footnote links and images (alt text is kept when present).
- Reading order: text follows the spine. Chapters that exist in the file but are not listed in the spine are not exported.
- Input: EPUB 2 and EPUB 3 files (
.epub), up to 100 MB. Anything else is rejected before processing. - Archive safety: files with unsafe paths (such as
../), duplicate entries, more than 8,000 entries or an expanded size above 500 MB are refused. - Not supported: DRM-protected books and books with encrypted or font-obfuscated resources (
META-INF/encryption.xml) can be opened for inspection but cannot be converted or merged. - Memory: the whole book is held in your browser’s memory. Very large illustrated books may fail on a phone; a desktop browser has far more headroom.
Privacy and safety
This tool runs entirely in your browser. When you choose a file it is read by JavaScript on this page; it is not uploaded to PDFSwift or to any other server, and the result is created on your device and handed to you as a download. Closing or reloading the tab discards the book from memory.
The page shows advertising supplied by a third party. Advertising scripts run separately from the tool and never receive your book. If you prefer, you can disconnect from the internet after the page has loaded and the tool will still work.
Frequently asked questions
How do I convert an EPUB to TXT?
Choose the file, press Convert to TXT, then download the result. The whole process takes place in your browser.
Is the book uploaded to a server?
No. The conversion code runs on the page, using your device’s memory and processor. The only network traffic on the page is advertising and the page’s own scripts.
Does it keep Arabic and other non-Latin text?
Yes. The output is Unicode (UTF-8) and the text is not transliterated or altered. Open the file in an editor that uses UTF-8, which is the default in current editors.
Why does the TXT have no italics or headings styling?
Plain text cannot carry formatting. Headings remain as their own lines. For emphasis and heading levels use the Markdown converter.
Can it handle a protected book?
Not if the content is encrypted. A book whose chapters are scrambled by DRM yields unreadable output, and this tool does not remove DRM.
Why is some text missing?
Text is exported in the book’s reading order. A file whose package lists only some chapters in the spine will export only those. Running the Repair tool can re-link chapters that the table of contents still points to.
Is the original EPUB changed?
No. The tool only reads the file and creates a separate text file.