Yes, Claude can read PDFs: attach a PDF to a chat and Claude can summarize it, answer questions about it and analyze its text and visual elements, such as images, charts and graphics.
As of November 14, 2026, according to Anthropic documentation:
- How to upload: click + in the chat box, choose Add files or photos, or drag the PDF into the chat, per the Claude Help Center.
- Chat limits: 500 MB per file, up to 20 files per chat and up to 1,000 pages per PDF.
- Charts and images: analyzed only in PDFs of 100 pages or fewer. From 101 to 1,000 pages, Claude reads the text only.
- Project files: 30 MB per file, with text extraction except for multimodal PDFs.
- Claude API: all active models support PDFs, with a 128 MB request limit and up to 600 pages per request (100 when the context window is under 1M tokens). Password-protected PDFs are not supported.
Related: What is the Claude file upload limit?, Can Claude read images? and Can ChatGPT read PDFs?
Source: Claude Help Center, Upload files to Claude and Claude API Docs, PDF support
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