PDF Page Counter & Print Cost Estimator

About the PDF Page Counter & Print Cost Estimator

Choose one PDF or a whole stack and see straight away how many pages each has and what size they are — A4, Letter, Legal, A3 or anything else, portrait or landscape. Every page is then checked for colour, so you know exactly which pages need a colour printer: “colour pages 3, 7–9, 14”. That is the list a print shop asks for, and it is often the difference between paying colour rates for a whole thesis or for six pages of it.

Enter your per-page prices for black & white and colour, choose single- or double-sided and the number of copies, and the estimate updates as you type. The counts and the estimate can be copied or downloaded as a CSV (one row per file or one row per page). Your PDFs are read on your device and never uploaded.

Common uses

• Knowing which pages of a report, thesis or brochure must go to the colour printer.
• Getting a print quote right before you go to the print shop or send an order.
• Counting pages across a folder of scanned documents, court filings or applications that have page limits.
• Checking that every page of a file is the paper size the printer expects (A4 vs Letter).
• Print shops: counting a customer’s files and estimating the job before printing.

How colour pages are found

Each page is rendered the way it prints — annotations and form values that print are included, layers marked “don’t print” are left out — at up to 72 dots per inch (very large pages a little less, so phones keep up). For every pixel the tool takes the difference between its strongest and weakest red, green and blue value. Black, white and every neutral grey have a difference of 0; colours have more.

• Any colour at all: a page is colour if at least 3 pixels differ by 24 or more (out of 255) — a blue link is enough.
• Normal: at least 12 pixels, and 0.01% of the page, differ by 40 or more.
• Ignore small colour marks: at least 0.5% of the page differs by 48 or more, so small logos, links and stamps don’t count.

A page is blank when (almost) nothing on it is darker than very light grey. Changing the setting re-sorts the pages at once; nothing is rendered again.

How the estimate is worked out

Estimate = (black & white pages × black & white price + colour pages × colour price + sheets × sheet price) × copies.

A page here is one printed side. Single-sided, every page uses a sheet; double-sided, each file needs pages ÷ 2 sheets, rounded up (a 5-page file needs 3). Each file and each copy is counted as starting on a fresh sheet. Blank pages are charged at the black & white price unless you tick Don’t charge for blank pages; Print colour pages in black & white prices every page at the black & white rate.

If your print shop charges per sheet for double-sided printing, enter that as the sheet price and set the page prices to 0. Taxes, binding and other extras are not included.

Page sizes

Sizes are the visible page area (the crop box) after the page’s rotation, in millimetres and inches. A size within 2 mm of a standard one gets its name: ISO A0–A6, B4–B5 and JIS B4–B5, Letter, Legal, Tabloid/Ledger, Executive and Half Letter, plus 16:9 and 4:3 slides. Pages of other sizes are listed by their dimensions.

Limitations

• Colour is judged from the rendered page on screen, not from the printer’s own rules: a print shop may count a page with grey made from colour inks, or a near-grey photo, differently. Ask them if a page is borderline.
• Very thin coloured lines on very large pages (A1 posters and bigger) can be too faint to notice at the reduced resolution.
• The estimate uses only the prices you enter — no currency conversion, taxes or minimum charges.
• Password-protected PDFs need their password; it is used on your device only. Files the browser can’t render are counted, with their pages marked “not checked”.
• The tables show up to 2,000 pages per file; the CSV always has every page.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.