OCR PDF
Make scanned PDFs searchable: recognise the text and add a selectable text layer, or export plain text.
How to OCR a scanned PDF
- Drop one or more scanned PDFs onto the page.
- Pick the language of the text and choose a searchable PDF, a .txt file, or both.
- Click Recognize text and download the result once every page is done.
Frequently asked questions
What does OCR do to my PDF?
The pages stay exactly as they look. An invisible text layer is added on top, so you can search, select and copy the words in any PDF reader.
Which languages are supported?
English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Japanese and Simplified Chinese. The language file downloads once (10–30 MB) and is cached by your browser.
How accurate is the recognition?
Clean scans of printed text at 150 DPI or more usually come out very well. Handwriting, low-resolution photos and skewed pages lower accuracy. Check the .txt output if you need the exact wording.
Does my PDF get uploaded for OCR?
No. Recognition runs inside your browser with Tesseract compiled to WebAssembly. Only the OCR engine and language data are downloaded from a CDN; your document never leaves your device.
Is it really free?
Yes. There is no account, no watermark, no file-size tier and no daily limit. Use it as often as you need.