Get Your PDF Back With a Clickable Table of Contents
AI finds your headings, then writes real bookmarks and a linked contents page into your own document. Your pages stay exactly as they were.
Loved by Publishers
Simple, fast, professional
Auto-Detect Headings
AI analyzes PDF structure
Real PDF Bookmarks
In your reader's sidebar
Check Before You Export
Your document beside the contents
No Software Required
Free online tool
TOC Example
Upload your PDF document
Drag and drop your PDF file here, or click to browse
Maximum file size: 10MB
5 PDFs remaining this month
What you get, free
Your PDF back with bookmarks and a clickable contents page — the first 25 headings are linked. No account needed to try it.
Pro links every heading and removes the limit.
Unlock More with Pro
Why Choose Our PDF Table of Contents Generator?
A PDF TOC creator built for publishers, technical writers, and educators — AI-powered structure analysis, accessibility-friendly output, and professional export options.
AI-Powered Analysis
Advanced machine learning algorithms automatically detect headings, subheadings, and document structure, with a confidence score on every entry.
PDF Accessibility Compliance
Generate structured table of contents that support accessibility goals for legal, government, and corporate documents.
Written Into Your Own PDF
You get your document back with a bookmark tree in the reader sidebar and a contents page whose entries jump to the right page — original pages untouched. Or export the contents on their own as Word, plain text, or JSON.
Check It Before You Export
Your document renders beside the detected headings. Click any heading to jump the preview to its page and confirm the number is right.
Secure & Private
Your PDF file is parsed locally in your browser and never uploaded. Only the extracted text is sent, encrypted, for AI heading detection.
Fast Processing
Analysis runs in seconds, not hours. Files up to 10MB on the free plan, 100MB on Pro, and 500MB on Enterprise.
Batch Processing
Process multiple PDFs in one go — up to 20 files per batch on Pro, unlimited on Enterprise.
Interactive Preview
Preview your table of contents with confidence scores, edit titles and page numbers, and remove unwanted entries.
Document Structure Analysis
Identify document hierarchy, heading levels, and navigation patterns for better PDF organization.
Built for Technical Documents
Technical manuals, research papers, e-books, reports, and policy documents — anything long enough that readers need a way to navigate it.
How to Create PDF Table of Contents Automatically
Generate professional PDF navigation in 4 simple steps. No technical knowledge required - our AI does all the heavy lifting for you.
Upload Your PDF
Drag and drop your PDF document or browse to select a file. Files up to 10MB on the free plan, 100MB on Pro, with any number of pages.
- Text-based PDF support
- Parsed in your browser
- Try it without an account
AI Analysis & Structure Detection
Our AI analyzes your document structure, identifies headings, and determines the table of contents hierarchy.
- Per-heading confidence scores
- Heading level detection
- Sign in for AI analysis
Review & Edit
Preview the generated table of contents, edit titles and page numbers, adjust hierarchy levels, and remove unwanted entries.
- Interactive editing
- Drag & drop reordering
- Confidence indicators
Export & Use
Download your original PDF with bookmarks and a clickable contents page written in — or export the contents alone as Word, plain text, or JSON.
- Bookmarks in your PDF
- Clickable contents page
- Original pages untouched
No signup required • Process unlimited PDFs • Export in 4 formats
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about generating PDF table of contents automatically. Can't find your answer? Email our support team.
Our AI-powered tool analyzes your PDF document structure, identifies headings and subheadings using advanced machine learning algorithms, and automatically generates a professional table of contents. The process takes just seconds and works with any PDF that has a text layer.
Yes. The free plan lets you generate table of contents for PDFs up to 10MB at no cost. Paid plans raise the file size limit and add batch processing, priority processing, and custom branding on exports.
Your own PDF, with two things added: a bookmark tree that shows up in the sidebar of Preview, Acrobat, Chrome or any other reader, and a contents page inserted at the front where every entry is a link that jumps to that page. Your existing pages are not rewritten or re-compressed — they come back exactly as they went in. If you only want the contents data, you can export it separately as Word (.docx), plain text, or JSON.
Yes, and you should. Your document renders next to the detected headings, and clicking any heading jumps the preview straight to its page, so you can confirm the AI got it right. Anything that looks wrong can be edited, re-pointed to a different page, or deleted before you export.
The first 25. Every heading is still listed on the contents page and your document always comes back complete — we never hand back a truncated copy of your own file — but links and bookmarks stop after the 25th entry. Pro and Enterprise link every heading.
It works with any PDF that contains a text layer — including scanned documents that have already been run through OCR. Purely image-based PDFs with no embedded text are not supported yet, so run those through an OCR step first and the generator will read them normally.
Accuracy depends on how consistently your document is formatted — cleanly structured PDFs with distinct heading styles detect best. Every generated TOC item includes a confidence score so you can spot and review weaker entries. You can modify titles, page numbers, and hierarchy levels before exporting.
Your PDF file is parsed locally in your browser and is never uploaded to our servers. To detect headings, the extracted text is sent over an encrypted connection to our AI analysis service and is used only to generate your table of contents. See our Privacy Policy for full details.
Definitely! After generation, you can edit any aspect of the table of contents: modify titles, adjust page numbers, change hierarchy levels, reorder entries, and remove unwanted items. The interactive editor makes it easy to perfect your TOC before export.
Our PDF table of contents generator works excellently with technical manuals, research papers, academic documents, e-books, reports, and any structured document with clear headings. It supports documents in multiple languages and various formatting styles.
A structured, bookmarked table of contents is one of the things assistive technology relies on to navigate a long PDF, so it supports your WCAG 2.1 and Section 508 accessibility work. It is one piece of a compliant document, not the whole picture — tagging, alt text, reading order, and contrast still need to be handled in your PDF.
Absolutely! Our PDF table of contents generator is perfect for publishers, technical writers, educators, and businesses. Commercial use is allowed for all features. Pro and Enterprise plans add batch processing, larger file size limits, and custom branding on exports.
The free plan supports PDF files up to 10MB. Pro raises that to 100MB and Enterprise to 500MB, which covers even lengthy technical manuals and scanned academic papers. Processing time scales with document size.
You can export your table of contents as structured JSON, which drops straight into custom scripts, static site builds, and document management pipelines. Pro and Enterprise plans also support batch processing so you can run a whole folder of documents at once. For anything more specific, email us at [email protected].
Still have questions?
Email us and we'll help you get the most out of our PDF table of contents generator.
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