PDF Crack Time Calculator
Select your PDF encryption mode, password length, character set, and GPU cluster size to estimate how long it would take to recover the password using Hashcat on modern RTX 5090 GPUs.
PDF Crack Time Calculator
Estimate how long it would take to recover a forgotten PDF password on a GPU cluster.
AES-256 — password-based search. Slowest throughput (38K H/s). Requires weak or partially-remembered password.
Estimated Crack Time
Very fast recoveryCandidates to test: 308.9 million
Hashcat speed: 38K H/s per GPU × 8 GPUs
Search space: 26^6 = 308 915 776
Based on Hashcat benchmark data from RTX 5090 GPUs in early 2026. Actual times vary by KDF round count, GPU driver overhead, system memory bandwidth, and parallelisation efficiency. Dictionary and rule-based attacks typically find human-chosen passwords much faster than brute-force estimates.
How to Interpret These Estimates
Dictionary attacks find most passwords first. The estimates above represent worst-case brute-force times. In practice, professional recovery services run dictionary and rule-based attacks first, which find 60-85% of human-chosen passwords within minutes to hours regardless of length. Only if the password is truly random do these brute-force timelines apply.
Mode 10400 (40-bit RC4) is guaranteed. If your PDF uses 40-bit RC4 encryption, the password can always be recovered regardless of its content. The 2^40 key-space search completes in 60-90 minutes on a single GPU, and the password content does not affect the time.
Multi-GPU scaling is linear. Professional recovery services use clusters of 8-32 GPUs. The time estimates scale proportionally: 8 GPUs are approximately 7.5x faster than a single GPU (accounting for ~94% scaling efficiency per additional card).
Real-world factors can vary times by 25-35%. PDF 2.0 documents with increased SHA-256 KDF rounds (100+ instead of 50) reduce Hashcat throughput. GPU driver version, system memory bandwidth, and parallelisation overhead also affect actual speeds.
Hashcat Benchmark Reference
| Hashcat Mode | Encryption | Speed (RTX 5090) |
|---|---|---|
| 10400 | PDF 1.1-1.3 RC4 40-bit (key search) | 1,100,000,000 H/s |
| 10500 | PDF 1.4-1.6 RC4 128-bit | 9,800,000 H/s |
| 10600 | PDF 1.6+ AES-128 | 75,000 H/s |
| 10700 | PDF 1.7+ AES-256 (50-round KDF) | 38,000 H/s |
Benchmarks from Hashcat v6.3 on NVIDIA RTX 5090, early 2026. Actual speeds vary by driver version and system configuration.
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