Skip to main content

​
Overview

By default, PyMuPDF4LLM processes every page in a document. The pages parameter lets you specify exactly which pages to extract — as a list of zero-based page indices. It is supported by to_markdown(), to_json(), and to_text(). 
import pymupdf4llm

# Extract only the first three pages
md_text = pymupdf4llm.to_markdown("document.pdf", pages=[0, 1, 2])

​
Zero-Based Indexing

Page numbers in PyMuPDF4LLM are zero-based — the first page of a document is page 0, the second is page 1, and so on.
Document Pagepages Index
Page 10
Page 21
Page 109
Last pagen - 1
Passing a page index that doesn’t exist in the document will raise an error. Always check the document’s page count (doc.page_count) before constructing a dynamic page list.

​
Common Patterns

​
First N Pages

n = 5
md_text = pymupdf4llm.to_markdown("document.pdf", pages=list(range(n)))

​
Last N Pages

import pymupdf

doc = pymupdf.open("document.pdf")
page_count = doc.page_count

last_5 = list(range(page_count - 5, page_count))
md_text = pymupdf4llm.to_markdown("document.pdf", pages=last_5)

​
A Specific Range

# Pages 10–19 (zero-based)
pages = list(range(10, 20))
md_text = pymupdf4llm.to_markdown("document.pdf", pages=pages)

​
Non-Contiguous Pages

# Cover page, table of contents, and appendix
md_text = pymupdf4llm.to_markdown("document.pdf", pages=[0, 1, 47, 48, 49])

​
Every Other Page

# Even pages only (0, 2, 4, ...)
md_text = pymupdf4llm.to_markdown("document.pdf", pages=list(range(0, 50, 2)))

​
Getting the Page Count

Use PyMuPDF directly to inspect a document’s page count before building your pages list: 
import pymupdf
import pymupdf4llm

doc = pymupdf.open("document.pdf")
print(f"Total pages: {doc.page_count}")

# Extract the second half of the document
midpoint = doc.page_count // 2
pages = list(range(midpoint, doc.page_count))

md_text = pymupdf4llm.to_markdown("document.pdf", pages=pages)

​
Page Selection with Page Chunks

When using page_chunks=True, the returned list will only contain chunks for the pages you specified. Chunk metadata preserves the original page number from the document: 
chunks = pymupdf4llm.to_markdown(
    "document.pdf",
    pages=[4, 5, 6],
    page_chunks=True
)

for chunk in chunks:
    print(f"Page {chunk['metadata']['page']}: {len(chunk['text'])} chars")
# Page 4: 1842 chars
# Page 5: 2103 chars
# Page 6: 987 chars
The page value in chunk metadata reflects the original document page number, not the position in the returned list. Page 4 in the document is always reported as 4, regardless of how many pages were skipped.

​
Page Selection with to_json() and to_text()

The pages parameter works identically across all three extraction functions: 
# JSON output — specific pages only
data = pymupdf4llm.to_json("document.pdf", pages=[0, 1, 2])

# Plain text — specific pages only
text = pymupdf4llm.to_text("document.pdf", pages=[0, 1, 2])

​
Processing a Document in Batches

For very large documents, you may want to process pages in batches to manage memory usage: 
import pymupdf
import pymupdf4llm
from pathlib import Path

doc = pymupdf.open("large-document.pdf")
batch_size = 20
results = []

for start in range(0, doc.page_count, batch_size):
    batch = list(range(start, min(start + batch_size, doc.page_count)))
    print(f"Processing pages {batch[0]}–{batch[-1]}...")
    chunk = pymupdf4llm.to_markdown(doc, pages=batch)
    results.append(chunk)

full_text = "\n\n".join(results)
Path("output.md").write_text(full_text, encoding="utf-8")
print(f"Done. {doc.page_count} pages processed.")

​
Skipping Blank or Cover Pages

Combine page selection with a quick content check to skip pages that return no meaningful text: 
import pymupdf
import pymupdf4llm

doc = pymupdf.open("document.pdf")

# Find pages that have selectable text
non_blank = [
    i for i in range(doc.page_count)
    if doc[i].get_text().strip()
]

print(f"{len(non_blank)} of {doc.page_count} pages contain text")

md_text = pymupdf4llm.to_markdown(doc, pages=non_blank)
The pages parameter is supported by to_markdown(), to_json(), and to_text(). For full API signatures see the API Reference.

​
Next Steps

Saving Output

Write extracted pages to .md, .json, and .txt files.

Extract Markdown

Full walkthrough of to_markdown() with all common options.

Extract JSON

Bounding boxes and layout data for custom pipelines.

OCR

Control automatic OCR behaviour and adaptors.