Guide
How much does PDF remediation cost?
Published figures run from cents to more than ten dollars a page. Here is where the numbers come from and how to estimate your own.
Last reviewed October 20, 2026. General information for public agencies, not legal advice. Rules change, so check the sources below and ask your lawyer or civil rights office what applies to you.
What published figures say
There is no official government rate for PDF remediation. The numbers below are published by vendors, a vendor-run pilot and a cloud provider, so treat them as marketing claims, not benchmarks. Per-page prices vary with how complex the documents are.
| Figure | What it describes | Source |
|---|---|---|
| $2 to $15 per page, 2 to 5 days | Manual remediation | AWS Marketplace listing for state and local agencies |
| $3 to $4 per page | Officials' estimate of manual remediation in a case study | AWS Public Sector Blog |
| About $4 to $5 or more per page by hand, about $0.06 per page with AI | A pilot comparing a manual process with an AI one | CNI Project Tressler |
The same pilot noted that math equations and scientific figures remain a major challenge for automated tools. Automatic results are not uniformly accurate, so a review step matters.
What drives the price
- Complexity. Tables, forms, multi-column layouts and charts take more work than a text letter.
- Scanned or native. A scanned page needs text recognition first, and the result needs checking.
- Image descriptions. Many images need a human-quality description, not just a label.
- Turnaround. A fast manual job costs more than a batch.
- Review. A person checking the result adds cost and catches what a machine misses.
Per page, not per file
Cost and time depend on pages. A 200-page budget is a very different job from a one-page notice, so count pages when you estimate, not files.
A worked example
Say your site has 400 PDFs averaging 6 pages, which is 2,400 pages. At $0.50 per page with the first 10 pages free, that is (2,400 − 10) × $0.50 = $1,195. At a manual price of $4 per page the same backlog would be $9,600. Your own mix will differ, and the pages that need a person to review will cost more.
What idioma.chat charges
pdf.idioma.chat charges $0.50 per page, and your first 10 pages are free. We test our results against PDF/UA with an open checker called veraPDF, and some documents, such as complex diagrams or poor scans, still need a person to review them. See pricing for the estimator, including translation.
Questions to ask any vendor
- Is the price per page or per document, and what counts as a page?
- What is included for scanned pages, forms, tables and image descriptions?
- Does a person review the result? What does that cost?
- What standard do you test against, with which tool, and can I see the report?
- Will you fix a document of mine for free first, so I can check the output?
- What happens when a document changes and needs to be fixed again?
Whatever you choose, run a sample of your real documents through it before you commit. See the checklist for what to check.
Sources
- AWS Marketplace: PDF accessibility listing (state and local agencies)
- AWS Public Sector Blog: new PDF accessibility remediation solution
- CNI: Project Tressler (PDF)