pypdf: Merge, Split and Edit PDFs with Python (2026)

pypdf: Merge, Split and Edit PDFs with Python (2026) shows you how to do the PDF jobs that usually end up as boring manual work: merging reports, pulling out a few pages, splitting a file into one PDF per page, stamping a CONFIDENTIAL watermark, rotating a sideways page, setting metadata, locking a file with an AES-256 password, extracting text and shrinking a bloated merge. Everything uses pypdf, the pure-Python library with no system dependencies, and every output below comes from a real run.

PDF handling is a natural next step after automating Excel files with openpyxl: build the numbers in a spreadsheet, then ship them as a merged, watermarked, password-protected PDF pack. For the bigger picture of scripting repetitive work, see Python automation mastery in 2026. If your goal is feeding PDFs to an LLM or a RAG pipeline (layout, tables, Markdown), use Docling to turn PDFs into LLM-ready Markdown instead; pypdf is the tool for manipulating the PDF files themselves.

TL;DR

pip install "pypdf[crypto]". Pure Python, works on Windows, macOS, Linux, Docker and serverless. The [crypto] extra adds AES encryption support.
Merge: writer = PdfWriter(); writer.append("a.pdf"); writer.append("b.pdf"); writer.write("merged.pdf").
Pick pages: writer.append("report.pdf", pages=[0, 2]). Split: one PdfWriter per page with add_page().
Edit: page.merge_page(stamp) for watermarks, page.rotate(90), writer.add_metadata(), writer.encrypt(..., algorithm="AES-256").
Read: PdfReader("file.pdf").pages[n].extract_text(). Scanned PDFs have no text layer and need OCR.
PyPDF2 is the old name. New code should use pypdf; most class names are the same.
Tested with pypdf 6.19.0, cryptography 50.0.2, Python 3.13.5 on 2026-10-08.

pypdf, PyPDF2, PyMuPDF or pdfplumber?

Library	Best for	Install	Notes
`pypdf`	Merge, split, rotate, watermark, encrypt, metadata, forms, basic text extraction	Pure Python	Actively maintained; the successor of PyPDF2
`PyPDF2`	Legacy scripts only	Pure Python	Deprecated; its development moved back into pypdf
`PyMuPDF`	Fast rendering, images, high-quality text extraction	Compiled wheels	AGPL or commercial licence
`pdfplumber`	Tables and exact character positions	Pure Python (pdfminer.six)	Read-only; does not write PDFs

Rule of thumb: if you are changing PDF files (combining, cutting, protecting, stamping), reach for pypdf. If you mainly need to read complex layouts or tables, use pdfplumber, PyMuPDF or Docling.

Versions tested (2026-10-08)

Python 3.13.5
pypdf 6.19.0 (current release on PyPI; requires Python 3.9 or newer)
cryptography 50.0.2 (installed by the pypdf[crypto] extra, used for AES-256)
reportlab 5.0.1 (only to generate the sample PDFs)

python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install "pypdf[crypto]==6.19.0" reportlab
python make_samples.py
python merge_split.py
python extract_text.py
python edit_secure.py
python shrink.py

0. Create sample PDFs to practise on

To keep the tutorial reproducible, we generate three small PDFs with reportlab: a four-page Q3 sales report, a one-page invoice, and a transparent CONFIDENTIAL stamp that we will use as a watermark. You can skip this step and point the scripts at your own files.

# Creates the sample PDFs used in this tutorial (reportlab is only needed here).
from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import A4
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas

def report(path="report.pdf"):
    c = canvas.Canvas(path, pagesize=A4)
    c.setTitle("Q3 Sales Report")
    sections = ["Overview", "Regions", "Revenue", "Next steps"]
    for n, name in enumerate(sections, start=1):
        c.setFont("Helvetica-Bold", 22)
        c.drawString(72, 770, f"Q3 Sales Report - {name}")
        c.setFont("Helvetica", 12)
        c.drawString(72, 740, f"Page {n} of {len(sections)}")
        if name == "Revenue":
            c.drawString(72, 700, "North 17,700.00 | South 9,872.50 | East 4,970.00")
            c.drawString(72, 680, "Total revenue: 32,542.50")
        else:
            c.drawString(72, 700, f"Notes for the {name.lower()} section.")
        c.showPage()
    c.save()

def invoice(path="invoice.pdf"):
    c = canvas.Canvas(path, pagesize=A4)
    c.setFont("Helvetica-Bold", 22)
    c.drawString(72, 770, "Invoice INV-1042")
    c.setFont("Helvetica", 12)
    c.drawString(72, 740, "Amount due: 1,250.00 | Due date: 2026-10-31")
    c.showPage()
    c.save()

def stamp(path="stamp.pdf"):
    c = canvas.Canvas(path, pagesize=A4)
    c.setFillColorRGB(0.85, 0.1, 0.1, alpha=0.25)
    c.setFont("Helvetica-Bold", 80)
    c.translate(300, 420)
    c.rotate(45)
    c.drawCentredString(0, 0, "CONFIDENTIAL")
    c.showPage()
    c.save()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    report(); invoice(); stamp()
    print("created report.pdf (4 pages), invoice.pdf (1 page), stamp.pdf")

$ python make_samples.py
created report.pdf (4 pages), invoice.pdf (1 page), stamp.pdf

1. Merge, pick pages and split PDFs

PdfWriter.append() is the modern way to merge: it copies all pages from a file (or just the pages you list), keeps links and bookmarks, and can add an outline entry so readers can jump to each part. Splitting is the reverse: create a new writer for each page and save it.

from pathlib import Path
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

# 1) Merge whole files, with a bookmark for each one
writer = PdfWriter()
writer.append("report.pdf", outline_item="Q3 report")
writer.append("invoice.pdf", outline_item="Invoice")
writer.write("merged.pdf")
merged = PdfReader("merged.pdf")
print("merged.pdf pages:", len(merged.pages))
print("bookmarks:", [item.title for item in merged.outline])

# 2) Extract selected pages (0-based): report pages 1 and 3
picked = PdfWriter()
picked.append("report.pdf", pages=[0, 2])
picked.write("summary.pdf")
print("summary.pdf pages:", len(PdfReader("summary.pdf").pages))

# 3) Split: one PDF per page
out = Path("pages")
out.mkdir(exist_ok=True)
for i, page in enumerate(merged.pages, start=1):
    single = PdfWriter()
    single.add_page(page)
    single.write(out / f"page_{i:02}.pdf")
print("split into:", sorted(p.name for p in out.glob("*.pdf")))

$ python merge_split.py
merged.pdf pages: 5
bookmarks: ['Q3 report', 'Invoice']
summary.pdf pages: 2
split into: ['page_01.pdf', 'page_02.pdf', 'page_03.pdf', 'page_04.pdf', 'page_05.pdf']

The four report pages plus the invoice give a five-page merged.pdf with two bookmarks, Q3 report and Invoice. The pages=[0, 2] argument uses 0-based indices, so it picked report pages 1 and 3 into summary.pdf. The split loop produced page_01.pdf to page_05.pdf; the zero-padded names keep them in order when sorted.

2. Extract and search text

extract_text() returns the text layer of a page. It is ideal for quick checks, routing files by keyword, or finding which page holds a total.

from pypdf import PdfReader

reader = PdfReader("merged.pdf")
print("page 3 text:")
print(reader.pages[2].extract_text())

# Find which pages mention a keyword
hits = [n for n, page in enumerate(reader.pages, start=1)
        if "Total revenue" in page.extract_text()]
print("'Total revenue' found on page(s):", hits)

$ python extract_text.py
page 3 text:
Q3 Sales Report - Revenue
Page 3 of 4
North 17,700.00 | South 9,872.50 | East 4,970.00
Total revenue: 32,542.50

'Total revenue' found on page(s): [3]

The Revenue page came back line by line, and the keyword search correctly reports page 3. Remember that this only works for PDFs that contain real text. A scanned document is just an image inside a PDF, so extract_text() returns an empty string; run OCR (for example Tesseract) or use Docling for those.

3. Watermark, rotate, add metadata and encrypt

PdfWriter(clone_from=...) loads an existing PDF for editing. We stamp every page with the transparent CONFIDENTIAL page using merge_page(), rotate the invoice page by 90 degrees, set the document title and author, then encrypt with AES-256. The second half reopens the file and proves each change.

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

stamp = PdfReader("stamp.pdf").pages[0]
writer = PdfWriter(clone_from="merged.pdf")

for page in writer.pages:          # watermark every page
    page.merge_page(stamp, over=True)
writer.pages[-1].rotate(90)        # rotate the invoice page
writer.add_metadata({"/Title": "Q3 Sales Pack", "/Author": "Finance Bot"})
writer.encrypt(user_password="s3cret", owner_password="owner-pw",
               algorithm="AES-256")
writer.write("secure.pdf")

reader = PdfReader("secure.pdf")
print("encrypted:", reader.is_encrypted)
print("wrong password:", reader.decrypt("guess").name)
print("right password:", reader.decrypt("s3cret").name)
print("title:", reader.metadata.title, "| author:", reader.metadata.author)
print("rotation of last page:", reader.pages[-1].rotation)
print("page 1 watermarked:", "CONFIDENTIAL" in reader.pages[0].extract_text())

$ python edit_secure.py
encrypted: True
wrong password: NOT_DECRYPTED
right password: USER_PASSWORD
title: Q3 Sales Pack | author: Finance Bot
rotation of last page: 90
page 1 watermarked: True

The wrong password returns NOT_DECRYPTED and the correct one returns USER_PASSWORD, so the file is really locked. The title and author survived encryption, the invoice page now has /Rotate 90, and the stamp text is part of page 1. As an independent check, poppler's pdfinfo reported Encrypted: yes (... algorithm:AES-256) for secure.pdf. The user password is what people type to open the file; the owner password controls permissions such as printing and copying.

4. Shrink a bloated merge

Merging many copies of similar files duplicates fonts, images and other resources. compress_identical_objects() removes the duplicates before you write the final file.

from pathlib import Path
from pypdf import PdfWriter

# Merging the same invoice 50 times duplicates fonts and resources
writer = PdfWriter()
for _ in range(50):
    writer.append("invoice.pdf")
writer.write("bloated.pdf")

writer.compress_identical_objects(remove_duplicates=True, remove_unreferenced=True)
writer.write("compact.pdf")

for name in ("bloated.pdf", "compact.pdf"):
    print(f"{name}: {Path(name).stat().st_size:,} bytes")

$ python shrink.py
bloated.pdf: 42,775 bytes
compact.pdf: 18,481 bytes

Fifty copies of the invoice dropped from 42,775 to 18,481 bytes, a 57% reduction, because the repeated font and resource objects are now stored once. In pypdf 6 the arguments are remove_duplicates and remove_unreferenced; the older remove_identicals and remove_orphans names still work but print a deprecation warning and will be removed in pypdf 7.

Common mistakes

Still importing PyPDF2. Change from PyPDF2 import PdfReader, PdfWriter to from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter. Very old names such as PdfFileReader, PdfFileMerger and getPage() were removed; use PdfReader, PdfWriter.append() and reader.pages[i].
Off-by-one page numbers. reader.pages and the pages= argument are 0-based. Page 1 is index 0.
Expecting text from scans. extract_text() reads the text layer only. Empty output usually means the PDF is an image; use OCR.
Encrypting without the crypto extra. AES needs pip install "pypdf[crypto]" (which brings in cryptography). Without an AES backend (cryptography or pycryptodome), pypdf raises a DependencyError.
Treating owner restrictions as security. A file with an empty user password opens for anyone, and permission flags are honoured only by well-behaved viewers. Set a real user password for confidential files.
Overwriting the input file. Write to a new file name, then replace the original once the output is verified.

A simple PDF automation workflow

Generate the report data with pandas or openpyxl and export each part to PDF.
Merge the parts with PdfWriter.append() and add a bookmark per section.
Stamp a watermark and set the title, author and subject metadata.
Run compress_identical_objects(), encrypt with AES-256, and write a new file.
Reopen the result, check page count and keywords with extract_text(), then email or upload it on a schedule.

FAQ

Is pypdf free for commercial use? Yes. pypdf is released under the permissive BSD-3-Clause licence.

Can pypdf create a PDF from scratch? It can create blank pages and combine or edit existing ones, but for drawing text and charts use a generator such as reportlab, then post-process with pypdf.

How do I merge all PDFs in a folder? Loop over sorted(Path("in").glob("*.pdf")), call writer.append(path) for each, then writer.write("all.pdf").

Can pypdf open password-protected PDFs? Yes. Call reader.decrypt("password") right after creating the reader, as section 3 shows.

pypdf: Merge, Split and Edit PDFs with Python (2026)

TL;DR

pypdf, PyPDF2, PyMuPDF or pdfplumber?

Versions tested (2026-10-08)

0. Create sample PDFs to practise on

1. Merge, pick pages and split PDFs

2. Extract and search text

3. Watermark, rotate, add metadata and encrypt

4. Shrink a bloated merge

Common mistakes

A simple PDF automation workflow

FAQ

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