Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API by Adobe

# Fix list: Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API

From Anchor Terminal's listing at https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/adobe-pdf-extract, the October 2026 research run, assessed 1 October 2026. Grade C, 56 out of 100.

This is everything the published grade says the listing lacks, the biggest possible gain to the total first. It comes from the reason given for each score, the checklist each category was scored against (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist), the provenance checks, the deductions, what we couldn't check and what the review panel asked for. A fix counts at the next check, once it's public.

For a coding agent working on Adobe PDF Services / PDF Extract API: work through the items below in the product, its docs and its public pages. Each category gives the reason for its score, with the points each checklist item earned, and the checklist itself, so the gap is the items that earned less than their points. Change the product, not the wording, and keep a note of what you changed and where it's published.

## 1. Reliability, 50 out of 100, up to 10 more on the total

Why it scored 50: The docs point to a PDF Services product page at status.adobe.com/products/512699, but it renders only with JavaScript, so we couldn't confirm its component history (15 of 20) or read any incidents (5). Rate limits are published, 25 requests a minute on the free tier and 100 on enterprise (15). The OpenAPI spec documents a 429 on every operation, described as insufficient quota, with no Retry-After header and no backoff guidance in the docs (5 of 15). No SLA found (0). Extract and PDF to Markdown aren't labelled beta (10).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-reliability):

Hosted APIs, MCP servers, models and platforms.

- 20, a public status page with component history (Statuspage, Instatus, BetterStack or the vendor's own).
- 0 to 30, the incident record for the last 90 days on that page. 30 for a clean record or trivial incidents only, 20 for minor incidents only, 10 for one major outage (an hour or more of a core API down, or errors across the board), 0 for several. 5 when there's no history we could read, and the note says so.
- 15, rate limits documented with numbers.
- 15, documented 429 or overload handling (Retry-After, backoff guidance), and idempotency keys or safe-retry guidance where writes are involved.
- 10, an SLA published for any paid tier.
- 10, the surface agents use is generally available, not beta or preview.

Local packages, SDKs, frameworks and stdio MCP servers.

- 20, installs from an official package with supported runtimes stated.
- 25, a public CI and test suite, passing on the default branch.
- 0 to 25, open crash or regression issues relative to activity (25 for few and handled, 0 for many, old and unanswered).
- 15, semver discipline and breaking changes called out in a changelog.
- 15, version 1.0 or later, or declared stable.

Protocols are read from their reference implementations, the public facilitators or servers, spec stability and test vectors.

## 2. Payments & pricing, 20 out of 100, up to 10 more on the total

Why it scored 20: No x402, MPP or L402 (0). The pricing page publishes the free tier and the transaction rules (1 transaction per 5 pages for Extract) but no paid price, which goes through sales (0). 500 Document Transactions a month free with no card (20). A person signs up for an Adobe account in a browser (0).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-payments):

The published rubric, also on the [x402 page](https://www.anchorterminal.com/x402/).

- 40, a machine payment protocol (x402, MPP or L402) on the tool's own endpoints. 10 to 30 when it covers only some endpoints or only goes through a third party, and the note says which.
- 20, per-call or per-unit pricing published without a login. 10 for public plan-only pricing, 0 for "contact sales" or prices behind a login.
- 20, a free tier or trial that doesn't need a card.
- 20, autonomous onboarding, meaning an agent can get access without a person signing up in a browser (keyless use, x402, a programmatic key API).

Payment platforms and agent wallets rarely charge for their own API over a machine protocol, so the first line has steps for them, and the highest one that applies counts. 40 when x402, MPP or L402 runs on all their own endpoints, 30 when it runs on part of their own API, 25 when their merchants can accept one, 20 for running a facilitator, 15 for paying as a buyer, and 0 when the only protocol is their own. Merchant acceptance sits above a facilitator because the platform's own customers can charge agents through it, while a facilitator settles for sellers who wire up the protocol themselves. The counter-argument (a facilitator does more for the protocol as a whole) has a point. Each note says which step applied.

Open-source software you run yourself is scored on its hosted or paid option if it has one. A free, self-hosted package with nothing to buy gets 20, 20 and 20 for the last three lines, and 0 to 40 for the first only if it ships a payment protocol.

## 3. Security & auth, 55 out of 100, up to 7.9 more on the total

Why it scored 55: OAuth server-to-server client credentials from an Adobe Developer Console project, exchanged for short-lived bearer tokens, and the project carries only the APIs added to it. Scored to match the Adobe Firefly listing (30). No read-only mode, though the only destructive call is deleting your own assets (10 of 20). Extract returns untrusted document text and we found no prompt-injection guidance (0 of 15). No per-call audit log found (0 of 15). security.txt valid to 2027-07-30, a public bug bounty on Intigriti and a PSIRT disclosure policy. Certifications for Document Cloud sit in a trust-centre table we couldn't render (15 of 20).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-security):

- 0 to 30, the credential model. 30 for OAuth 2.1 with scopes, or scoped and revocable keys with rotation. 20 for plain revocable API keys. 10 for one all-powerful key. 10 off when a secret can travel in a URL query string as a documented option.
- 0 to 20, read-only or least-privilege modes, and confirmation or approval for destructive actions.
- 0 to 15, prompt-injection posture where the tool returns untrusted content (documented mitigations or guidance). A tool that returns no untrusted content gets 10.
- 0 to 15, audit logs or per-call visibility for the operator.
- 0 to 20, a security programme. security.txt or a disclosure policy, a bug bounty, SOC 2 or ISO 27001, advisories handled in public.

Models are read for retention, whether API data trains models (and whether that's off by default), zero-retention options and certifications. Frameworks for telemetry defaults, approval hooks, guardrails and sandboxing.

## 4. Agent ergonomics, 57 out of 100, up to 7 more on the total

Why it scored 57: Extract lets you pick text, tables or both, CSV or XLSX tables and optional figure renditions, and PDF to Markdown returns one Markdown file, but there's no page-range option on Extract (15 of 25). Output-size controls are the element and rendition switches above, with no pagination of results (10 of 20). The Extract error codes are specific enough to act on, such as DISQUALIFIED_PERMISSIONS for copy-protected files (16 of 20). No idempotency key. Requests echo an x-request-id, and webhooks replace polling (6 of 20). Official SDKs in Java, .NET, Node.js and Python, but every job is a token call, an asset upload, an operation and a poll (10 of 15).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-ergonomics):

- 0 to 25, context cost. For MCP, the number and size of the tool definitions (25 for ten or fewer compact tools, 15 for 11 to 30, 5 for more than 30, plus up to 10 back for toolsets, dynamic loading or read-only subsets). For APIs, whether responses can be sized (field selection, limits, summaries).
- 20, pagination, filtering and output-size controls.
- 20, actionable, documented error responses, codes and messages an agent can recover from.
- 20, idempotency or safe retries, and for MCP the `readOnlyHint` and `destructiveHint` annotations.
- 15, sensible defaults, few required parameters, and official SDKs in at least two languages.

Models are read for tool use, structured output, prompt caching, context length, batch and SDKs. Frameworks for how much code and how many defaults a tool-calling agent with MCP needs.

## 5. Maintenance & community, 53 out of 100, up to 4.1 more on the total

Why it scored 53: Python SDK 4.3.0 and .NET SDK 4.4.0 shipped on 2026-08-10, 52 days ago (20). Those two, on the same day, are the only release-note entries in the last 90 days, and the one before them was 2025-07-10 (10 of 20, our call for two releases rather than three). Public release notes and Adobe's developer forums, replies not sampled (10 of 15). Python and .NET SDKs are current, Java was last released in April 2025 and Node.js is still 4.1.0 from November 2024 (10 of 15). The Python SDK repository has a publish workflow and no test workflow (3 of 10).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-maintenance):

- 0 to 30, time since the last release, or the last published model or API change for a closed service. 30 within 30 days, 20 within 90, 10 within 180, 0 older.
- 20, at least three releases or dated changelog entries in the last 90 days.
- 0 to 25, responsiveness. Issues and pull requests answered on GitHub (the open issues and how recent the replies are). For closed services, a public changelog and a support or community channel that answers, 0 to 15.
- 15, presence in the official MCP registry under a verified namespace (MCP servers), or current official SDKs (APIs and models).
- 10, package health, current dependencies and CI.

Models are read for deprecation notice periods and model churn rather than release counts.

## 6. Schema & documentation, 80 out of 100, up to 3.3 more on the total

Why it scored 80: OpenAPI 3.0.1 spec with 48 paths, including /operation/extractpdf and /operation/pdftomarkdown, published in the AdobeDocs/pdfservices-api-documentation repository and rendered as the API reference (25). No llms.txt, developer.adobe.com/document-services/llms.txt returns 404 (0). The Extract description lists what each option returns, and an API limitations section says when not to use it (XFA forms, CAD drawings, non-English text, scans under 200 DPI) (16 of 20). Typed request bodies with enums for elementsToExtract and renditionsToExtract and stated defaults, though tableOutputFormat is a free string (12 of 15). An error-code table for Extract (at least 16 named codes, such as DISQUALIFIED_PAGE_LIMIT and BAD_PDF_COMPLEX_TABLE) and request examples in the spec (12 of 15). Dated release notes and a written semver policy for the SDKs (15).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-schema):

APIs and MCP servers.

- 25, a machine-readable contract (a public OpenAPI file or similar; for MCP, typed JSON Schema inputs on every tool).
- 10, llms.txt or Markdown docs served for agents.
- 0 to 20, descriptions that say what a tool is for, when to use it and when not to, read from the tool definitions in the source or the API reference.
- 0 to 15, typed inputs with enums, constraints and required fields, and no free-form JSON blobs.
- 0 to 15, examples and documented error responses.
- 15, versioning and a public changelog.

Models are read from the API reference, the OpenAPI file, llms.txt, the structured-output and tool-use docs and the model cards. Frameworks from docs a model can follow, typed interfaces, examples and the API reference.

## 7. Transparency & trust, 80 out of 100, up to 1.8 more on the total

Made of editorial 60, provenance 100.

Why it scored 80: Closed service under Adobe's terms, and the SDKs ship under Adobe's own licence agreement rather than an OSI licence (15). The PDF Services security page says uploads and outputs stay in Document Cloud for 24 hours by default, can be deleted at once with DELETE /assets, and can bypass Adobe storage through signed URLs. We didn't read a DPA (20 of 30). The SDK versioning policy says a major release starts an end-of-life clock for the previous one, and past notices are dated, such as JWT credentials deprecated in 2023 (15 of 20). Processing on AWS in US-East or EMEA, chosen by the customer, and no subprocessor list checked (10 of 20).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-transparency):

- 0 to 30, source availability and licence clarity. 30 for open source under an OSI licence, 15 for closed with clear terms, 0 for unclear terms.
- 0 to 30, data handling and retention statements that agree with each other (privacy policy, DPA, retention periods, subprocessors).
- 0 to 20, a deprecation policy or notices with dates.
- 0 to 20, telemetry disclosed with an opt-out (local software), or subprocessors and data locations disclosed (hosted).

The other half of Transparency and trust is the provenance score, computed from checked facts (below). The category score is the mean of the two.

## What we couldn't check

What we couldn't read counted as absent. Publishing it on a page a plain HTTP fetch can read (not only in a browser) lets the next check count it.

- unchecked: incident history on status.adobe.com, which needs JavaScript
- unchecked: Document Cloud certifications, since the trust-centre table didn't render
- unchecked: the AWS Marketplace price for the international subscription
- The listing's openapi was null, but a public spec exists in the AdobeDocs repository. Patched

## Weaknesses

- No published paid price, paid use goes through sales
- Four steps per job (token, upload, operation, poll) and no idempotency key
- 25 requests a minute on the free tier, no Retry-After or backoff guidance
- Node.js SDK unchanged since November 2024 and no llms.txt
- Status page renders only with JavaScript

## What costs an agent a turn today

The notes we give agents before they call it. Each one is a workaround an agent shouldn't need.

- Cache the access token and reuse it until it expires
- Budget 1 Document Transaction per 5 pages for Extract and PDF to Markdown, so 500 free transactions cover about 2,500 pages
- Pass `notifiers` with a callback URL instead of polling the job status
- Use `pdf-services-ew1.adobe.io` when documents must stay in the EU
- Check `/operation/pdfproperties` first, since copy-protected PDFs fail Extract with DISQUALIFIED_PERMISSIONS

## What the review panel asked for

- Distinct 429 messages
- Publish an llms.txt
- page range on Extract
- llms.txt

## When it's done

Send what changed and where it's published as a dispute (https://www.anchorterminal.com/builders/#disputes, or `POST https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/contact` with `"kind": "dispute"`). Disputes are answered in public, and the listing is checked again by the same checklist. Paying for an audit or a listing claim changes nothing here.