iLovePDF PDF to Excel Converter: Pricing, File Size Limits and OCR Compared
iLovePDF's PDF to Excel tool is free to start and genuinely good at clean, digital PDFs. The parts that decide whether it fits your work are buried in a comparison table most people never open: a 15 MB cap, one file per task, and OCR locked behind a paid plan. Here is every number, taken from the vendor's own page.
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The short answer
iLovePDF converts PDF to Excel free for text based files, with three limits that are easy to miss. The free Basic plan caps the PDF to Excel task at 15 MB and one file at a time. OCR, which is what a scanned PDF needs, is a separate line item restricted to paid plans, so scans cannot be converted for free at all. And the Business plan, despite costing more than Premium, does not raise a single conversion limit: same 4 GB file cap, same ten files per task. Premium lists at 9 per user monthly or 60 per user annually with a 25 user ceiling; Business is quote only. Buy Premium if you need OCR, bigger files or batches. Buy Business only if you need single sign on, workflows or a specific processing region, because it buys governance rather than capacity.
Last updated September 2026. Limits and plan structure read directly from iLovePDF's published pricing comparison. iLovePDF prices in local currency and runs promotions, so confirm the figure that renders for your account before you buy.
15 MB
Free cap, PDF to Excel
1 file
Free batch, per task
10 files
Premium and Business alike
Premium
Lowest tier with OCR
iLovePDF PDF to Excel limits by plan
iLovePDF publishes its limits task by task rather than as one headline number, which is why so many summaries of it are wrong. These rows are the ones that govern a PDF to Excel job specifically, copied from the vendor's plan comparison rather than from a review site.
| What it governs | Basic (free) | Premium | Business |
|---|---|---|---|
| PDF to Excel | Included | Included | Included |
| PDF to Excel with OCR | Not included | Included | Included |
| Max file size, PDF to Excel | 15 MB | 4 GB | 4 GB |
| Files per PDF to Excel task | 1 | 10 | 10 |
| Standalone OCR PDF tool | 15 MB, 1 file | 4 GB, 10 files | 4 GB, 10 files |
| Overall document processing | Limited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Ads in the interface | Yes | Ad free | Ad free |
| Regional file processing | Not offered | 7 regions | 11 regions |
| Support level | Basic | Preferential | Dedicated |
| Single sign on | No | No | Yes |
Source: iLovePDF's published plan comparison, read September 1, 2026. Limits are stated per task, so they reset with each conversion rather than accumulating against a monthly allowance.
Business costs more than Premium and converts exactly the same amount
This is the part of iLovePDF's pricing that nobody writes about, and it is checkable in about thirty seconds on their own page. Walk down the file size column and the batch column for every conversion tool, and Premium and Business are identical. PDF to Excel: 4 GB and ten files on both. OCR PDF: 4 GB and ten files on both. PDF to Word, PDF to PowerPoint, Office to PDF: identical. Merge PDF is 500 files on both.
A few limits do not scale with any plan at all. Edit PDF is capped at 100 MB on Basic, Premium and Business alike. Sign PDF is 50 MB on all three. Redact PDF and Compare PDF sit at 400 MB regardless of what you pay. If those tools are central to your work, no amount of upgrading changes what you can put through them.
So what does the Business plan actually buy? Governance, not capacity: single sign on, dedicated support rather than preferential, team management and volume discounts, workflows, custom AI credit allocation instead of the fixed 2,000 that comes with Premium, and eleven processing regions instead of seven. Those are real things for a company with a security review to pass. They are not throughput.
The practical consequence for a finance or operations team: if the reason you are looking at Business is that Premium keeps stopping you at ten files, Business will stop you at exactly the same place. The fix is a different workflow, not a bigger plan. That is the same trap as buying a higher tier of any per task tool and discovering the ceiling was never tied to the price.
What iLovePDF costs
iLovePDF sells three tiers and prices in the visitor's local currency, which is why quoted figures vary so much between articles. The structure below is taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Treat the numbers as the list rate before any promotion, and check what renders in your own checkout.
| Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing | Seat ceiling | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | Free | Free | 1 | Occasional, small, text based PDFs |
| Premium | 9 per user | 60 per user per year | Up to 25 | Anyone who needs OCR, bigger files or batches |
| Business | Contact sales | Contact sales | Custom | Teams needing SSO, workflows, set regions |
Annual billing is advertised at 42 percent off the monthly rate. iLovePDF renders prices in local currency, so the figures above appear in euros outside the United States; third party software directories report the US Premium rate as 9 dollars per user per month. Because those directories disagree with each other, treat any dollar figure you read elsewhere, including ranges from 4 to 15 dollars, as unverified until you see it in your own checkout.
Where the 50 MB figure comes from, and why it is wrong for this tool
Search for iLovePDF's file size limit and you will repeatedly find 50 MB. It does not match iLovePDF's own plan comparison, which lists the free ceiling task by task: 100 MB for Merge, Split, Rotate, Unlock and Protect, 200 MB for Compress, 40 MB for Image to PDF, 25 MB for PDF to JPG, and 15 MB for every Office conversion including PDF to Excel.
The mistake is understandable. Writers find one number for the service, publish it as the number, and it gets copied. But the conversion tools are the strictest category on the whole free plan, so a person who reads 50 MB and then tries to convert a 30 MB annual report to Excel will be refused with no explanation of why.
Fifteen megabytes is not a lot for the documents that actually need converting. A scanned 40 page bank statement clears it easily. So does a property rent roll with embedded logos, or a construction takeoff exported at print resolution. This is why so many people conclude that free PDF to Excel tools do not work: the tool is fine, the file was simply over a cap nobody told them about.
Which plan matches which job
Stay on Basic if
Your PDFs were generated by software rather than scanned, they are comfortably under 15 MB, and you convert one at a time a few times a month. That is a real use case and it costs nothing. Accept the ads and the single file limit and it does the job.
Buy Premium if
Any of your source documents are scans, or any file is over 15 MB, or you convert several at once. OCR is the single feature that moves most buyers off the free plan, and it is the cheapest way to get it. The 4 GB ceiling effectively removes size as a concern.
Buy Business if
You need single sign on, a named support contact, workflow automation, volume pricing across many seats, or a guarantee about which region processes your files. Do not buy it expecting to convert more or bigger files, because those limits are identical to Premium.
How we compare, honestly
We are not a general PDF suite and it would be silly to pretend otherwise. iLovePDF has thirty odd tools: merging, splitting, compression, signing, redaction, page numbering, forms, translation. If your job is PDF work in general, it covers far more ground than we do and the free tier is genuinely useful.
We do one thing: pull tables out of PDFs and hand you a spreadsheet that adds up. That focus is what lets us run OCR on scanned pages without putting it behind a tier, keep numeric columns numeric instead of importing them as text, and handle the messy real world documents finance teams deal with, where columns are separated by whitespace rather than ruled lines. You can test that on your own file in the box at the top of this page before deciding anything. In fairness we have a ceiling of our own: uploads are capped at 20 MB, so we are five megabytes better than iLovePDF's free tier on size rather than unlimited. The difference that matters more is that our OCR is not on the other side of a paywall.
The honest recommendation: if you need a Swiss army knife for PDFs and your conversions are occasional and clean, iLovePDF Premium is good value and you should buy it. If the table extraction itself is the hard part, if scans are involved, or if this is a recurring monthly job rather than a one off, a purpose built converter will save you more time than a broader tool will. Try both on the same file. That comparison takes five minutes and beats any article, including this one.
Questions people ask about iLovePDF and Excel
Is iLovePDF PDF to Excel free?
Partly. Converting a normal, text based PDF is free, but iLovePDF's own plan comparison caps the free PDF to Excel task at 15 MB and one file per task. The OCR version of the tool, the one that handles scanned pages, is a Premium feature and is not on the free Basic plan at all. So a scan or a large report cannot be converted for free.
Does iLovePDF have OCR for PDF to Excel?
Yes, but only on paid plans. iLovePDF lists PDF to Excel and PDF to Excel (OCR) as two separate rows in its plan comparison, and the OCR row is checked for Premium and Business only. If your PDF came off a scanner there is no text layer for the non OCR converter to read, so the free plan cannot help you.
What is the file size limit for iLovePDF PDF to Excel?
15 MB on the free Basic plan and 4 GB on Premium and Business, per iLovePDF's published comparison as of September 2026. Third party articles frequently quote 50 MB, which does not match the vendor's own table for this task. The limit applies per task rather than per account, so it resets with every conversion you run.
How many files can iLovePDF convert to Excel at once?
One on the free plan, ten on Premium, and ten on Business. That last number surprises people: moving from Premium to Business buys single sign on, dedicated support, workflows, volume discounts and eleven processing regions, but it does not raise the PDF to Excel batch ceiling by a single file.
How much does iLovePDF Premium cost?
iLovePDF's pricing page lists Premium at 9 per user month to month and 60 per user per year on annual billing, advertised as 42 percent off, capped at 25 users. iLovePDF prices in local currency, so figures render in euros outside the United States, and third party directories report the US rate as 9 dollars a month. Business is quote only.
Can iLovePDF convert a scanned PDF to Excel?
Only on a paid plan. Scanned pages have no text layer, so they need the OCR version of the converter, which iLovePDF restricts to Premium and Business. On the free plan a scanned PDF will either fail or produce an empty spreadsheet, and that is the single most common reason people conclude a PDF to Excel converter is broken.
Is iLovePDF good for bank statements and invoices?
It works for clean, digitally generated statements under the size cap. It struggles where finance documents usually get hard: scans on the free tier, monthly runs that exceed the ten file batch limit, and tables held together by whitespace rather than ruled lines. If this is a recurring job rather than a one off, the batch ceiling is the constraint that bites first.
Does iLovePDF have an API for PDF to Excel?
Yes. iLovePDF publishes a developer API across its tool set and promotes it separately from the Premium and Business subscriptions on its pricing page. API usage is billed on its own terms rather than being bundled into a Premium seat, so budget it as a separate line if automation rather than manual uploading is what you are actually buying.
Is iLovePDF safe for confidential documents?
iLovePDF states an ISO 27001 certification and HTTPS transfer on every plan, and offers regional file processing on paid tiers: seven regions on Premium, eleven on Business. Regional processing is the feature that matters when you have a contractual obligation about where data is handled, and it is not available on the free plan.
Is iLovePDF Business worth it over Premium?
For governance reasons, yes. For throughput, no. Business adds single sign on, dedicated support, team management, workflows, volume discounts, custom AI credits and eleven regions. Every file size cap and batch limit on the conversion tools is identical to Premium, so buying Business to convert more or bigger files is paying for the wrong thing.
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Work out which limit is actually stopping you
Before you upgrade anything, name the constraint. If it is file size, Premium fixes it and Business does not fix it any harder. If it is a scanned document, you need OCR and only paid plans have it. If it is the number of files per run, no iLovePDF plan goes above ten and you should be looking at a different workflow. Getting that diagnosis right is the difference between a 60 a year fix and a subscription that changes nothing.
If you want the replacement angle rather than the plan comparison, our iLovePDF alternative for PDF to Excel and CSV covers it, and whether iLovePDF is really free for PDF to Excel goes deeper on the free tier. For scanned files specifically see OCR PDF to Excel, and for files over the cap see converting large PDFs to Excel. If the ten file ceiling is your problem, batch PDF to Excel conversion is the right page. The closest competitor on the same free-then-Premium model is covered in our Smallpdf alternative comparison, and PDF to Excel converter pricing across the market puts all of them in one table.