diff --git a/Cargo.lock b/Cargo.lock
index d2a65fa..fd83b0a 100644
--- a/Cargo.lock
+++ b/Cargo.lock
@@ -1143,6 +1143,26 @@ dependencies = [
  "crossbeam-utils",
 ]
 
+[[package]]
+name = "console_error_panic_hook"
+version = "0.1.7"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "a06aeb73f470f66dcdbf7223caeebb85984942f22f1adb2a088cf9668146bbbc"
+dependencies = [
+ "cfg-if",
+ "wasm-bindgen",
+]
+
+[[package]]
+name = "console_log"
+version = "1.0.0"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "be8aed40e4edbf4d3b4431ab260b63fdc40f5780a4766824329ea0f1eefe3c0f"
+dependencies = [
+ "log",
+ "web-sys",
+]
+
 [[package]]
 name = "const-oid"
 version = "0.9.6"
@@ -2621,7 +2641,7 @@ source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
 checksum = "07033963ba89ebaf1584d767badaa2e8fcec21aedea6b8c0346d487d49c28667"
 dependencies = [
  "cfg-if",
- "windows-targets 0.48.5",
+ "windows-targets 0.52.6",
 ]
 
 [[package]]
@@ -2764,6 +2784,12 @@ dependencies = [
  "rawpointer",
 ]
 
+[[package]]
+name = "maybe-owned"
+version = "0.3.4"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "4facc753ae494aeb6e3c22f839b158aebd4f9270f55cd3c79906c45476c47ab4"
+
 [[package]]
 name = "maybe-rayon"
 version = "0.1.1"
@@ -3270,6 +3296,32 @@ dependencies = [
  "unicode-normalization",
 ]
 
+[[package]]
+name = "pdfium-render"
+version = "0.8.33"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "dca4101838fe3cb35e5f9dd8b55569ea483e7a342a6853878a5e56fcfdb04cc5"
+dependencies = [
+ "bitflags 2.9.1",
+ "bytemuck",
+ "bytes",
+ "chrono",
+ "console_error_panic_hook",
+ "console_log",
+ "image",
+ "itertools",
+ "js-sys",
+ "libloading",
+ "log",
+ "maybe-owned",
+ "once_cell",
+ "utf16string",
+ "vecmath",
+ "wasm-bindgen",
+ "wasm-bindgen-futures",
+ "web-sys",
+]
+
 [[package]]
 name = "peeking_take_while"
 version = "0.1.2"
@@ -3313,6 +3365,12 @@ version = "0.1.0"
 source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
 checksum = "8b870d8c151b6f2fb93e84a13146138f05d02ed11c7e7c54f8826aaaf7c9f184"
 
+[[package]]
+name = "piston-float"
+version = "1.0.1"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "ad78bf43dcf80e8f950c92b84f938a0fc7590b7f6866fbcbeca781609c115590"
+
 [[package]]
 name = "pkcs1"
 version = "0.7.5"
@@ -3661,6 +3719,7 @@ dependencies = [
  "mime_guess",
  "notify",
  "pdf-extract",
+ "pdfium-render",
  "quick-xml",
  "raw-cpuid",
  "regex",
@@ -5319,6 +5378,15 @@ version = "2.1.3"
 source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
 checksum = "daf8dba3b7eb870caf1ddeed7bc9d2a049f3cfdfae7cb521b087cc33ae4c49da"
 
+[[package]]
+name = "utf16string"
+version = "0.2.0"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "0b62a1e85e12d5d712bf47a85f426b73d303e2d00a90de5f3004df3596e9d216"
+dependencies = [
+ "byteorder",
+]
+
 [[package]]
 name = "utf8_iter"
 version = "1.0.4"
@@ -5409,6 +5477,15 @@ version = "0.2.15"
 source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
 checksum = "accd4ea62f7bb7a82fe23066fb0957d48ef677f6eeb8215f372f52e48bb32426"
 
+[[package]]
+name = "vecmath"
+version = "1.0.0"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "956ae1e0d85bca567dee1dcf87fb1ca2e792792f66f87dced8381f99cd91156a"
+dependencies = [
+ "piston-float",
+]
+
 [[package]]
 name = "version-compare"
 version = "0.2.0"
@@ -5626,7 +5703,7 @@ version = "0.1.9"
 source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
 checksum = "cf221c93e13a30d793f7645a0e7762c55d169dbb0a49671918a2319d289b10bb"
 dependencies = [
- "windows-sys 0.48.0",
+ "windows-sys 0.59.0",
 ]
 
 [[package]]
diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml
index b9107ce..851fe81 100644
--- a/Cargo.toml
+++ b/Cargo.toml
@@ -35,6 +35,7 @@ notify = "8"
 mime_guess = "2"
 tesseract = { version = "0.15", optional = true }
 pdf-extract = { version = "0.9", optional = true }
+pdfium-render = { version = "0.8", optional = true }
 image = { version = "0.25", features = ["png", "jpeg", "tiff", "bmp"], optional = true }
 imageproc = { version = "0.25", optional = true }
 thiserror = "2.0"
@@ -59,7 +60,7 @@ testcontainers-modules = { version = "0.12", features = ["postgres"], optional =
 
 [features]
 default = ["ocr", "s3"]
-ocr = ["tesseract", "pdf-extract", "image", "imageproc", "raw-cpuid"]
+ocr = ["tesseract", "pdf-extract", "pdfium-render", "image", "imageproc", "raw-cpuid"]
 s3 = ["aws-config", "aws-sdk-s3", "aws-credential-types", "aws-types"]
 test-utils = ["testcontainers", "testcontainers-modules"]
 
diff --git a/src/file_service.rs b/src/file_service.rs
index 350ee32..409ce26 100644
--- a/src/file_service.rs
+++ b/src/file_service.rs
@@ -320,18 +320,61 @@ impl FileService {
 
     #[cfg(feature = "ocr")]
     async fn generate_pdf_thumbnail(&self, file_data: &[u8]) -> Result<Vec<u8>> {
-        use image::Rgb;
+        use pdfium_render::prelude::*;
         
-        // Try to extract first page as image using pdf-extract with panic protection
+        // Try to render first page as image using pdfium-render with panic protection
         match catch_unwind(AssertUnwindSafe(|| {
-            pdf_extract::extract_text_from_mem(file_data)
-        })) {
-            Ok(Ok(text)) => {
-                // If we can extract text, create a text-based thumbnail
-                self.generate_text_based_thumbnail(&text, "PDF", Rgb([220, 38, 27])).await
+            // Initialize pdfium
+            let pdfium = Pdfium::new(
+                Pdfium::bind_to_library(Pdfium::pdfium_platform_library_name_at_path("./"))
+                    .or_else(|_| Pdfium::bind_to_system_library())
+                    .unwrap_or_else(|_| Pdfium::bind_to_library(Pdfium::pdfium_platform_library_name()).unwrap())
+            );
+            
+            // Load PDF document from memory
+            let document = pdfium.load_pdf_from_byte_vec(file_data.to_vec(), None)?;
+            
+            // Get first page
+            let page = document.pages().first()?;
+            
+            // Render page to bitmap (200x200 thumbnail size)
+            let bitmap = page.render_with_config(
+                &PdfRenderConfig::new()
+                    .set_target_width(200)
+                    .set_maximum_height(200)
+            )?;
+            
+            // Convert to image format
+            let width = bitmap.width() as u32;
+            let height = bitmap.height() as u32;
+            let buffer = bitmap.as_raw_bytes();
+            
+            // Create RGB image from BGRA buffer
+            let mut rgb_buffer = Vec::with_capacity((width * height * 3) as usize);
+            for chunk in buffer.chunks(4) {
+                if chunk.len() >= 4 {
+                    // Convert BGRA to RGB
+                    rgb_buffer.push(chunk[2]); // R
+                    rgb_buffer.push(chunk[1]); // G  
+                    rgb_buffer.push(chunk[0]); // B
+                }
             }
+            
+            let img = image::ImageBuffer::from_raw(width, height, rgb_buffer)
+                .ok_or_else(|| anyhow::anyhow!("Failed to create image from buffer"))?;
+            
+            let dynamic_img = image::DynamicImage::ImageRgb8(img);
+            
+            // Convert to JPEG
+            let mut buffer = Vec::new();
+            let mut cursor = std::io::Cursor::new(&mut buffer);
+            dynamic_img.write_to(&mut cursor, image::ImageFormat::Jpeg)?;
+            
+            Ok(buffer) as anyhow::Result<Vec<u8>>
+        })) {
+            Ok(Ok(thumbnail)) => Ok(thumbnail),
             Ok(Err(_)) | Err(_) => {
-                // Fall back to placeholder if PDF extraction fails or panics
+                // Fall back to placeholder if PDF rendering fails or panics
                 self.generate_placeholder_thumbnail("PDF").await
             }
         }