OCR PDF
Reads text from scanned pages on your device and adds an invisible, searchable text layer.
Runs in your browser. Files aren’t uploaded.
Choose a PDF
Drop a PDF here, or choose from your device.
How to use OCR PDF
- 1Choose a scanned PDF and its language.
- 2Select Recognize text. Each page is rendered and read on your device.
- 3Download the searchable PDF, or copy and download the recognized text.
Good to know
- OCR uses Tesseract (open source) running in your browser. Language models (0.7–2.9 MB) are downloaded from this website the first time.
- Accuracy depends on scan quality. Handwriting, low resolution and unusual fonts produce more errors.
- The searchable layer uses a Latin font; for scripts like Hindi the text file contains the recognized words but the PDF layer may not.
- Large documents can take a while, especially on phones.
Supported files
- Input
- A scanned PDF, up to 150 MB; English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese or Hindi
- Output
- A searchable PDF and a .txt file of the recognized text
Processing happens on your device, so very large files depend on its memory. Free, with no sign-up or watermark.
What people use it for
- Search inside scanned contracts and letters
- Copy text out of a scanned page
- Prepare a scan for PDF to Word or Compare PDF
OCR PDF questions
Something else? Visit support
No. Text is recognized by Tesseract, an open-source OCR engine, running in your browser. The language model is downloaded from this website the first time you use a language.
Clear, printed text at a good resolution is usually recognized well. Handwriting, low-resolution scans and unusual fonts produce more errors, so check important text.
Hindi text is recognized and included in the .txt file. The PDF’s searchable layer uses a Latin font, so Hindi words may not be searchable inside the PDF itself.