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OCR PDF — free online tool
Make a scanned PDF searchable. Scans and photographed documents contain pictures of words, not words, so you cannot search, copy or paste from them. The OCR tool recognises the text on every page and adds it as an invisible, selectable layer exactly where each word sits, so your pages look the same but can be searched and copied. Prefer plain text? Choose the .txt output instead. English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and Dutch are supported. Recognition runs in your browser with the open-source Tesseract engine, so the scan itself is never uploaded. The whole process runs entirely in your browser — your file never leaves your device, there is nothing to install, and it is free with no sign-up.
- Turns scanned pages into editable, searchable text
- Handles multi-page PDFs up to 50 MB and 200 pages
- Runs on your device — confidential scans never leave it
- Searchable PDF keeps your original pages; plain .txt is also available
- Free with no sign-up and no page quota
How to ocr pdf
- 1Upload the scanned PDF. Straight, well-lit scans at 300 DPI recognise best.
- 2Click Run OCR — recognition proceeds page by page and the progress bar tracks it.
- 3Wait for the last page; a 20-page scan typically takes one to two minutes on a laptop.
- 4Download the searchable PDF (or the .txt file).
- 5Open it and check numbers, names and anything in a table — those are where OCR errors cluster.
Frequently asked questions
Does it produce a searchable PDF with the text layer added?
Yes, that is the default output. The recognised words are placed invisibly over each page where they appear, so the page looks unchanged but text can be searched, selected and copied. Choose Text file (.txt) if you only want the words.
Which languages are supported?
English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and Dutch. Pick the document's language before you run OCR so accents and special characters are recognised. Other scripts, such as Devanagari or Arabic, are not supported yet.
How accurate is it?
On a clean 300 DPI scan of printed text, typically above 98% character accuracy. Accuracy drops with low-resolution scans, skewed pages, handwriting, coloured backgrounds and small fonts. Rotate crooked pages with Rotate PDF first, and prefer the original scan over a photo of a printout.
Why is it slower than online OCR services?
Because it runs on your computer rather than on a server farm — the trade-off for keeping the document private. Speed depends on your device; closing other tabs helps. Very large scans can be split with Split PDF and processed in parts.
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