7 Best Free PDF Password Remover Software That Still Working in 2022

A PDF file can be protected by a password for privacy concern. And it is not uncommon to see you have the need to recover or remove password from a protected PDF file. If this is the case, certainly you can pick a PDF password remover software reviewed in blew to recover PDF password. However, there are some terms you should know in advance.

User and Owner Password. PDF user password means, it is preventing you from opening the PDF file. On the other side, PDF Owner Password means it is preventing the pdf file from being printed, copied, pasted or edited.

Password Strength. Weak, medium and complex. The weak password can be recovered in a short time and a strong password could be taken days or weeks to be cracked.

Owner password can be removed instantly with a number of online service. It is easy task so we won’t put any emphasis on it. Instead, we are more focused on removing password from PDF file. However, we need to recover the lost or forgotten password first before removing it.

Tip: Once the password is recovered, then you can remove password from PDF by saving as a new copy.

Create an Encrypted PDF File for Testing

Before starting with recovering PDF password, I’m going to password protect a PDF file for demonstration. Then I will be performing on that document to recover its password.

After creating your document, click on the file menu> export, and save it as PDF file. Then click on the options at the bottom, click on the Encrypt the document with a password.

After that click on the OK. Now enter your password, in my case I will be entering 123456 as a password.

1. PDFCrack Password Remover

PDFCrack is a powerful terminal-based utility which you can use to recover PDF passwords easily. PDFCrack is a decent tool whenever you had to open a password-protected PDF but unfortunately don’t know the password.

PDFCrack employs user-defined guessing (dictionary)and Brute-Force attacking engines. One thing to note is that this PDF password remover works better in the Linux environments, though it is officially available for windows. If you truly wish to run PDFCrack in Windows, you need to compile the source under Cygwin. Or install a Linux operating system in a Virtual Machine in Windows, which is a more preferred way in my case as the steps are very simple.

Features of PDFCrack:

• Open-source PDF Recovery Terminal utility.
• Support the standard security on all PDF formats.
• Crack user and owner passwords easily.
• Wordlist and brute forcing are available.

How to Remove Password from PDF with PDFCrack in Kali Linux

First, create a new Linux guest on Windows with the help of VMWare Workstation software. In my case, it is Kali Linux.

Boot the virtual machine and open Terminal. Type the following command to install PDFCrack in Kali Linux:

sudo apt install pdfcrack

To recover password from PDF, you need to use -f parameter and specify the location of password protected PDF file. In my case, the PDF is saved on desktop.

pdfcrack -f /home/kali/Desktop/12.pdf

After you inserted the command, you have to wait until its password is cracked.

Cons:

• You can’t use it directly in Windows.
• PDFCrack doesn’t have a GUI Interface.
• No hardware acceleration support.

2. Hashcat PDF Password Remover

Hashcat is definitely an advanced cracking password, it is running crazy number of hashes to crack a password. Cyber security analysts are using the hashcat to penetrate and test their systems of a security hole.

In fact, Hashcat has more than 350 algorithms and hashes within its disposal. Besides all of them it is an open source under the MIT License. It is cross platform Terminal utility for Linux, macOS and Windows.

Since Hashcat is built specifically for cracking passwords, you can use it to crack password of a PDF file too. The process to recover a PDF file password inside Linux is a bit lengthy and it takes a lot of time. However, inside windows we can do it a bit faster with the help of John Ripper, hashcat, and Perl. So, you need to download all of them.

Features of Hashcat:

• Support all PDF encryptions algorithms.
• CPU and GPU acceleration available.
• Come with a lot of penetration tools.
• Free and open-source.
• Work with 100+ file types.

How to Remove PDF Password Using Free Hashcat Utility

Hashcat can only decrypt password in hash format. Hence, you need to extract the password hash from PDF file. Fortunately, you can use this online service to do this:

https://www.onlinehashcrack.com/tools-pdf-hash-extractor.php

Upload the PDF file and you will get the output hash like this:

Save the text into a plain text file and name it hash.txt.

Finally, download and run hashcat with the following command to crack this PDF hash:

hashcat -m 10500 -a 0 hash hash.txt

Cons:

• Hard to use because of too many parameters.
• For beginners it is crazy time consuming.
• Only command-line prompt available.

3. Dr.PDF Password Remover

iSeePassword Dr.PDF is the best PDF document password recovery tool. This powerful application is not only recovering the passwords of PDF file and it removes the restrictions of copying, editing and printing PDFs instantly.

This program has the password of open PDF files with Brute-force Attack, Brute-force with Mask Attack and Dictionary Attack methods. I am definitely recommending it to use if you are not using the PDFCrack. There are couple of reasons but the among those reason these are two are the most important.

Features of Dr.PDF:

• Available for Windows and Mac.
• Very clean interface and easy to navigate around.
• Recover Multiple PDF files password at once.
• Remove PDF owner password almost instantly.
• Multi-core processing capability and graphics accelerator.
• Work pretty well with Adobe Acrobat (128 or 256-bit AES encryption).

How to Remove Password from PDF Using iSeePassword Dr.PDF

Go to iseepassword.com and download Dr.PDF software. Follow the prompt to install the program and pick up the option on the main screen.

Next, import encrypted PDF file and select a password cracking engine under Step 2.

Make proper settings and start to recover PDF password. Once the password is recovered successfully, it will be shown at the center of program screen. Copy the password and use the password to open the file. After that, you can remove the password by saving a new copy without password protection.

Cons:

• Free version can only recover password less than 3 digits.
• Possible crash on old versions of macOS.

4. LostMyPass Online PDF Password Remover

If you’re looking for an online service to recover PDF password, then you better give a try on lostmypass.com. This website supports Word, PowerPoint, PDF, Excel, and archive formats (Zip, RAR, 7z). According to lostmypass.com, their service is able to crack the user password for any encrypted PDF file. However, they are clearly not going to remove the owner password.

They have given a very clear probability about recovering the password. Among them the weak passwords recovering is free. However, for the other options you have to pay.

Features of LostMyPass:

• Work on all platforms, even mobile devices.
• Crack PDF password concurrently on multiple distributed servers.
• Weak password can be found soon.
• Support different PDF encryption algorithms.

If your document has a weak password, then I am definitely recommending you to use this online password removal service. In this case you don’t even need to use the previous methods. All you have to do is upload password-protected PDF file and wait for it to show the password.

How to Remove Password from PDF Using Lostmypass.com

Go the lostmypass.com, then click the FILE TYPES mu at the top and choose PDF.

Now upload Your PDF file. Now the PDF password is shown on the screen upon success.

Cons:

• File size limited to 100 MB.
• PDF file will be uploaded to their own server.
• Unable to recover the strong password under free plan.

5. Elcomsoft PDF Password Remover

With this software, it is possible to access password-protected PDF files with high speed. If there is no “password to unlock”, or if you know it, you can’t immediately open, edit or print your PDF, then use this software. It will remove copy, edit, open and print restrictions easily.

If a PDF file is protected by a powerful 128-bit or 256-bit password, Advanced PDF Password Recovery performs a number of different and very close guesses on the PDF file document to obtain the original password.

Also remember that all versions of Adobe Acrobat or any other PDF program is supported by this app.

Features of Advanced PDF Password Recovery:

• Very fast for finding PDF open passwords.
• Ability to edit and print all types of PDF documents.
• Support for 40 and 12 coding in RC4 and AES encryption.
• Ability to remove password from PDF document.
• Built-in Graphic accelerators.

How to Remove Password from PDF Using Elcomsoft Software

Working with this application very easy, just download and install it, after that launch it. At the top click open, then locate the protected PDF file.

Once the PDF file is opened within the app, click on the Sart recovery.

It will open a new window, where you have to pick up the Decrypt tab.

Now, and save your decrypted PDF file. Next time when you open it, the password has been removed.

Cons:

• A lot of features have been adjusted in a small window, so it is a bit hard to navigate.
• Higher pricing plans. Standard (49 €), Pro (99 €) and Enterprise (399 €).

6. Accent PDF Password Recovery

As the name suggests this application is also powerful as the other PDF password recovery applications. It can support the standard PDF encryption to recover their password. If you have forgotten your PDF password, you can use this application to gain access to it once again.

Features of Accent PDF Password Recovery:

• Support brute force, dictionary and mask attack.
• Compatible with RC4 40-bit, RC4 128-bit, AES-128 and AES-256 encryption.
• Remove owner PDF password.
• Only using resources a lot when the brute force attack is selected.
• General massive dictionary words based on customer rules.

How to Remove Password from PDF via Accent PDF Password Recovery

In my experience the demo version is not much of help but if you purchase it, the steps are the same.

After launching the app, click on the folder icon at the top and select your PDF file.

The application is saying the it is password protected, giving some information about the security type. After reading them, click Next.

Choose your favorite attack type, I will go the default.

Configure your Brute force settings, and click Finish. The moment you clicked finish, it will go back to the homepage and it will start recovering your password.

While it is trying to find out our password, it will use a lot of resources of your system.

Cons:

• Unable to add your own custom password.
• Take seriously with Dictionary words and divided it into single and medium. The same thing goes with number like 0–99, 100–999 and etc.

7. Eltima Recover PDF Password

The final PDF password remover application I reviewed is Eltima Recover PDF Password. This utility is powerful enough to recovery both user password and owner password. Recover PDF Password is highly optimized to work on multi-core computers, which ensures faster password search. At the same time, it support the latest version of Adobe Acrobat encryption technology.

With this PDF password recovery software, you can use different password engines for recovering lost password. These options are password length, template by dictionary, or use comprehensive method. If the basic method was not the answer, then the application is going to take at a drastic measure to the more complex and time-consuming appraoch.

Features of Eltima Recover PDF Password:

• Quick password recovery of PDF files.
• Combined with different password cracking types.
• Free dictionary file with more than 400K sample passwords.
• Save recovered passwords in the history.

How to Use Elitma PDF Password Remover to Remove PDF Password

Open the PDF file by clicking at the top (folder icon).

After selecting your PDF file, configure your settings about the attack then click on the Start recovery. That is!

Cons:

• Using extensive of computing resources even for basic decryption.
• Huge trouble for using Network search.

In Closing:

Here are my suggestions if you want to recover forgotten PDF password. For weak password, please use LostMyPass online service. For medium or strong password, try PDFcrack or Hashcat if you were familiar with command line. However, iSeePassword is the best choice for beginner who are more willing to use GUI software.