How to save a web page as a PDF, and keep the text
Chrome's print dialog, Adobe Acrobat, PrintFriendly, SingleFile and Page Scanner all turn a page into a file you can keep. They keep different things. Here is what each one keeps, and which to reach for.
"Save as PDF" sounds like one thing. It is at least five, and they keep different parts of the page. One keeps the text but not the look. One keeps the look and lets a paid app own the file. One throws the clutter away on purpose. One is not a PDF at all, and is the best archive of the lot. Here is what each one gives you, so you can pick by what you will do with the file later.
What each one keeps
| Chrome's print dialog | Adobe Acrobat | PrintFriendly | SingleFile | Page Scanner | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The file you get | PDF, or a clean print | one HTML file | PDF, PNG or JPEG | ||
| Text you can select | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Looks like the page on screen | ✗ the print layout | ✓ "the look and feel of the original" | ✗ reflowed, clutter removed | ✓ | ✓ |
| Ads and navigation | as the print layout | kept | removed, by design | kept | kept, or cropped out by you |
| Whole page in one file | ✓ on paper pages | ✓, and whole sites, several levels deep | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ one long page, or A4 or Letter |
| Links stay clickable | — | — | ✓ "working links" | ✓ | ✗ |
| Crop, annotate, redact | ✗ | in Acrobat, after | edit before saving | ✗ | ✓ in the editor |
| Account or subscription | ✗ | an Acrobat subscription | ✗ for the web tool | ✗ open source | ✗ |
| Where the page goes | your machine | opens in Acrobat | PrintFriendly's service | your machine | your machine |
| Command line | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ single-file-cli | ✓ |
✓ yes, ✗ no, — the product's own documentation does not say.
Chrome's print dialog
Press Cmd+P or Ctrl+P and choose Save as PDF. It is free, it is already installed, and
the text is real text. What you get is the page's print layout, which the site's print stylesheet
decides: navigation and sidebars often go, column widths change, and the page is cut into sheets
wherever the ruler lands, mid-line included. For a plain article that is fine. For a page whose
layout is the point, a dashboard, a design, a long thread, it is a different document.
Adobe Acrobat
Acrobat's Chrome extension has a Convert webpage to PDF command that Adobe describes as producing "rich, high-quality PDF files that maintain the look and feel of the original content". The converted PDF opens in Acrobat. Acrobat on the desktop goes further than a page: Create then Web page takes a URL, and Capture multiple levels follows the links to a depth you set, or the whole site, staying on the same path or server if you ask. It is the tool for converting a site rather than a page. It is also part of Acrobat, which is a paid subscription, and the file lives in Adobe's viewer until you save it.
PrintFriendly
PrintFriendly starts from the opposite idea: the page has too much on it. Paste a URL, or use the extension, and it strips the ads, the navigation and the distractions, lets you delete whatever else you do not want, and then prints or saves what is left as a PDF "with working links". Recipes, articles and reports come out as clean reading copies. That is also the limit: it is a reflow, so the result does not look like the page, and the page passes through PrintFriendly's service to be cleaned.
SingleFile
SingleFile is not a PDF tool, and it belongs in this list anyway. It "helps you to save a complete web page into a single HTML file", styles, images and all, that opens in any browser offline. The text stays text and the links stay links, because it is still a web page. It is open source, runs in Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari and most other browsers, and has a command-line version. What it is not is a document: you cannot print an HTML file to A4 with a predictable result, hand it to someone who expects a PDF, or drop it into a reference manager that wants one.
Page Scanner
Page Scanner lays the page out once at its full height, in your own Chrome, and asks Chrome's print pipeline to render that layout. The PDF's text is selectable and searchable, the artwork is vector, and it looks like the page did on screen, because it is the same layout rather than the print stylesheet's. In the editor you crop, mark up, blur or redact, and choose one long page or A4 or Letter with the page breaks placed where they do not cut a line. PNG and JPEG are one click away for when an image is what you need. It is free, nothing leaves your machine, and there is a command line and an MCP server for doing it from a script or an agent.
What it does not keep: hyperlinks. The words of a link are in the PDF, the link is not. Text drawn on a canvas is a picture, a video is a still, and while the scan runs Chrome shows its "started debugging this browser" bar.
Which should you use?
Use the print dialog if the page is an article and its print layout is acceptable. You have it already.
Use Acrobat if you already pay for it, or you need a whole site converted several levels deep into one PDF.
Use PrintFriendly if you want a clean reading copy without the ads, and you do not need the page to look like the page.
Use SingleFile if you are archiving the web and want the most faithful, most portable copy, and a browser is where you will open it.
Use Page Scanner if you want a PDF that looks like the page, whose text you can search, that prints on real paper without shrinking to a strip, and that you can crop, annotate and redact first.
Frequently asked questions
Which ones keep the links? PrintFriendly says its PDFs have working links, and SingleFile's file is a web page, so its links are links. Page Scanner does not keep them. For Chrome's print dialog and Acrobat, the documentation does not say either way.
Can I save a page I am signed in to? Chrome's print dialog, SingleFile, Acrobat's extension and Page Scanner all work inside your browser, on the page as you see it. PrintFriendly's URL box fetches the page itself, so a page behind a login is not the page it sees; its extension works from the tab instead.
Why is my PDF ten feet tall? Because you asked for the whole page as one page. Page Scanner's extract sheet says the size in inches before you save, and A4 or Letter is one click away.
Page Scanner is a Chrome extension. Add it to Chrome.