Here are three ways to delete pages from a PDF using Python:

1. Using pymupdf
2. Using pypdf2
3. Using pdfrw

For this practical implementation, we will use the five-page PDF like this:

We will remove some of the pages from the above PDF for the demonstration.

Here is the file: sample_5_pages.

Method 1: Using PyMuPDF

If you are looking for a memory-efficient solution among many PDF libraries, then I highly recommend using the PyMuPDF library. It provides a .delete_page() function that accepts the index as a page number and removes it.

You can install it using the “pip”:

pip install pymupdf

You can import it as “fitz” like this code:

import fitz

Here is the complete code:

import fitz


def delete_pages(input_path, output_path, pages_to_delete):
    doc = fitz.open(input_path)
    pages_to_delete.sort(reverse=True)
    for page_num in pages_to_delete:
        doc.delete_page(page_num - 1)  # 0-indexed
    doc.save(output_path)
    doc.close()


# Usage
input_path = 'sample_5_pages.pdf'
output_path = 'reduced.pdf'
pages_to_delete = [1, 3, 5]  # Page numbers to delete (1-indexed)
delete_pages(input_path, output_path, pages_to_delete)
print("Pages no 1, 3, and 5 deleted successfully")

Output

As illustrated in the screenshot above, our output PDF has only two pages, numbered 2 and 4. Page numbers 1, 3, and 5 have been deleted successfully.

Method 2: Using PyPDF2

The most popular library to use for simple operations is PyPDF2. If you need to remove specific pages rather than a range, this is the approach to take.

 import PyPDF2

# Custom function to delete pages
def delete_pages(input_path, output_path, pages_to_delete):
    with open(input_path, 'rb') as file:
        pdf_reader = PyPDF2.PdfReader(file)
        pdf_writer = PyPDF2.PdfWriter()

        for page_num in range(len(pdf_reader.pages)):
            if page_num + 1 not in pages_to_delete:
                page = pdf_reader.pages[page_num]
                pdf_writer.add_page(page)

    with open(output_path, 'wb') as output_file:
        pdf_writer.write(output_file)


# Calling the custom function
input_path = 'sample_5_pages.pdf'
output_path = 'reduced.pdf'
pages_to_delete = [1, 2, 3, 5]  # Page numbers to delete (1-indexed)
delete_pages(input_path, output_path, pages_to_delete)
print("Pages number 1, 2, 3, and 5 have been deleted")

Output

From the image above, it’s clear that we removed four pages from the PDF, and only one page remains, which is page 4.

Method 3: Using pdfrw

The pdfrw is a third-party PDF library that has a unique use case. When you want to preserve the original PDF structure while operating, you should use this library.

You can install the pdfrw library using the command below:

pip install pdfrw

Here is the complete Python code:

from pdfrw import PdfReader, PdfWriter


def delete_pages(input_path, output_path, pages_to_delete):
    reader = PdfReader(input_path)
    writer = PdfWriter()

    for page_num, page in enumerate(reader.pages, 1):
        if page_num not in pages_to_delete:
            writer.addpage(page)

    writer.write(output_path)


# Calling the custom function
input_path = 'sample_5_pages.pdf'
output_path = 'reduced.pdf'
pages_to_delete = [3, 4, 5]  # Page numbers to delete (1-indexed)
delete_pages(input_path, output_path, pages_to_delete)
print("Pages number 3, 4, and 5 have been deleted")

Output

You can see from the above screenshot that we generated a new PDF, but the last three pages are missing.

Final analysis

Which library to choose always depends on which type of requirement you have.

1. If performance and speed are priorities, use PyMuPDF.
2. For small to medium-sized PDFs with simple structures, use the “PyPDF2” or “pdfr2” library.