The short answer: PDF.co pricing is credit based. Monthly plans cost $9.99 for 16,500 credits, $24.99 for 37,000, $49.99 for 80,500, $99.99 for 159,850 and $299.99 for 483,000, with annual billing about 10 percent cheaper. Its AI powered PDF to XLSX endpoint uses 28 credits per page, so the Basic plan converts roughly 589 pages a month and every plan works out to about 1.7 to 1.9 cents a page before upload and status-check calls.
That is cheap, and if you are a developer wiring PDF to Excel into your own code, PDF.co is one of the lowest per page prices you will find. The catch is in the word "page". A 30 page bank statement costs 30 times what a one page invoice costs, every helper call adds credits, and someone still has to write and maintain the integration. Below is the full price list as PDF.co publishes it, the credit math for PDF to Excel specifically, and the point where a per file converter becomes the cheaper month.
How much does PDF.co cost?
PDF.co sells five self serve subscription tiers plus an Enterprise plan for accounts that need more than 500,000 credits a month. These are the US dollar prices in PDF.co's own pricing data, read on October 1, 2026.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | Credits per month | PDF to XLSX pages at 28 credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $9.99 | $107.89 a year | 16,500 | about 589 |
| Personal | $24.99 | $269.89 a year | 37,000 | about 1,321 |
| Business 1 | $49.99 | $539.89 a year | 80,500 | about 2,875 |
| Business 2 | $99.99 | $1,079.89 a year | 159,850 | about 5,708 |
| Business 3 | $299.99 | $3,239.98 a year | 483,000 | about 17,250 |
| Enterprise | Quote | 500,000 and up | Custom | |
Every tier includes full API access. The differences between them are credits and a few limits: Basic, Personal and Business 1 keep output links for 60 minutes, Business 2 and 3 for 24 hours; Basic and Personal run at 10 requests per second, the Business tiers at 25; and only Business 3 supports an IP allowlist. Subscription credits reset at the start of each month. Credit packs, which never expire, can only be bought on top of an active subscription and cost up to 30 percent more per credit.
How many credits does PDF to Excel use on PDF.co?
PDF.co charges PDF conversions per page, and the rate depends on the output format. Its credits table lists these for the spreadsheet jobs most buyers care about:
| Endpoint | Credits | Charged |
|---|---|---|
| PDF to XLSX, AI powered | 28 | per page |
| PDF to XLS, AI powered | 35 | per page |
| PDF to CSV, AI powered | 28 | per page |
| Find tables, JSON table information | 21 | per page |
| AI invoice parser | 100 | per page |
| Upload a local file | 11 | per call |
| Generate a presigned upload URL | 7 | per call |
| Check background job status | 2 | per call |
Two details catch people out. First, the older XLS format costs more than XLSX, 35 credits against 28, so ask for XLSX unless a legacy system demands otherwise. Second, a real workflow rarely makes one call. Uploading the file first adds 11 credits, and if you run long documents in async mode, every poll of the job status adds 2 more. PDF.co's own documentation says its estimates assume sync mode and can differ in async mode.
How much does PDF.co cost per page?
At 28 credits a page, PDF to XLSX costs about $0.017 a page on Basic and stays between roughly $0.017 and $0.019 on every tier, because PDF.co scales credits almost linearly with price. Paying yearly cuts that by about a tenth. Add the upload call and a 1 page file costs 39 credits, while a 12 page bank statement costs 347.
That near flat rate is the most important thing to know about PDF.co pricing. Bigger plans do not get you a meaningfully cheaper page; they get you more pages, longer link expiry and a higher request rate. So the cost of PDF.co is set almost entirely by how many pages you push through it.
Does PDF.co have a free trial?
Yes. The trial runs for 30 days or 10,000 credits, whichever comes first, and does not ask for payment details. At 28 credits a page plus uploads that is roughly 300 pages of PDF to XLSX conversion, enough to test a real batch. After the trial you need a monthly or annual plan to keep calling the API.
PDF.co vs a per file PDF to Excel converter
The fairest way to compare is by a month of real work. The table below takes common finance workloads, prices PDF.co at 28 credits per page plus one 11 credit upload per file on the cheapest monthly tier that covers it, and prices PDFXLSX on the monthly plan that covers the file count and team size.
| Workload per month | Pages | PDF.co credits | PDF.co plan | PDFXLSX plan | Lower bill |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solo bookkeeper, 30 statements of 4 pages | 120 | 3,690 | Basic, $9.99 | Starter, $49 | PDF.co |
| Firm of 3, 200 statements of 8 pages | 1,600 | 47,000 | Business 1, $49.99 | Plus, $99 | PDF.co |
| Finance team of 5, 450 reports of 10 pages | 4,500 | 130,950 | Business 2, $99.99 | Plus, $99 | About even |
| Lending ops, 1,500 files of 6 pages | 9,000 | 268,500 | Business 3, $299.99 | Pro, $199 | PDFXLSX |
| Servicing team, 3,000 statements of 12 pages | 36,000 | 1,041,000 | Enterprise quote | Pro, $199 | PDFXLSX |
Read honestly, PDF.co is cheaper for small and mid sized volumes, often by half. If you have a developer and a few hundred pages a month, it is hard to beat on price. The lines cross somewhere around 4,000 to 5,000 pages a month, and past that the flat per file plan wins, because PDFXLSX pricing counts a 40 page file once and Pro has no file cap at all.
What the PDF.co price does not include
The credit price buys an API call. It does not buy the work around it, and for most finance teams that work is the bigger cost.
- Code. PDF.co is used through its API or through connectors such as Zapier and Make. Somebody has to build the flow, handle errors, store outputs before the link expires and keep it running. If nobody on the team writes code, that is the real price.
- Checking the output. A converted sheet is only useful if the amounts are numbers and the rows tie out to the printed totals. Test that on your own documents during the trial, especially long statements and scans.
- Seats. There is one API key per account. A finance team that wants five people uploading and downloading in a browser needs a different kind of tool.
That is the gap a dedicated converter fills. PDFXLSX runs OCR on scanned PDFs as part of the conversion, puts each table on its own sheet, keeps amounts numeric, and lets staff upload in the browser in batches of up to 20 files. Plus includes 5 seats and 500 files a month for $99. If you do want code, the PDF to Excel API is part of Pro at $199 a month, with a webhook when a batch finishes and no credit meter to watch.
Is PDF.co worth it for PDF to Excel?
PDF.co is worth it when three things are true: you have a developer, your volume is under a few thousand pages a month, and PDF to Excel is one step in a larger automation that also merges, splits, fills or watermarks PDFs. Its value is breadth at a low per call price, and it is now owned by Artifex Software, the company behind Ghostscript and MuPDF, according to its site footer.
It is a weaker fit when the people converting files are accountants rather than engineers, when your documents run long, or when volume is high and growing. A 12 page statement at 347 credits looks small until you multiply it by a few thousand clients. When the spreadsheet then has to land in QuickBooks, you can convert a CSV file to QBO instead of rekeying rows into the bank feed.
How does PDF.co compare with other PDF to Excel APIs?
Among developer tools, PDF.co sits at the low end on price. CloudConvert pricing charges about 4 credits per PDF to Office job regardless of page count, which is cheaper still for long files that convert cleanly. ConvertAPI pricing and Aspose pricing sit in between, and SDK vendors sit far above: the Apryse pricing page explains why the former PDFTron quotes PDF to Excel as an add-on to a custom annual license. The right choice depends less on the headline rate than on whether you are buying an API for developers or a converter your team uses every month.
Frequently asked questions
Is PDF.co free?
PDF.co has a 30 day trial with 10,000 credits and no card required. After that, every plan is paid, starting at $9.99 a month for 16,500 credits. When the trial ends, the account switches to PDF.co's free plan, and continued API use needs a monthly or annual subscription.
Do PDF.co credits roll over?
Subscription credits do not roll over. They reset at the start of each billing month. Credit packs never expire and carry over, but PDF.co sells them only to customers with an active subscription, and they cost up to 30 percent more per credit than the plan credits.
What happens when I run out of PDF.co credits?
Your API calls pause until you add credits. PDF.co offers Smart Credit Refill on active subscriptions, which tops up the balance automatically when it runs low, and sends a low credit email alert. Plan for this if a conversion step sits inside a client facing workflow.
Which PDF.co plan do I need for PDF to Excel?
Multiply your monthly pages by 28, add 11 credits per file for uploads, and pick the tier above that number. As a rough guide, Basic covers about 500 pages a month, Business 1 about 2,500 and Business 3 about 15,000 once uploads are counted.