OCR Scanned PDF
Turn scanned, image-only PDFs into selectable text or a searchable PDF — OCR runs entirely in your browser.
OCR takes real time (several seconds per page) and accuracy depends on scan quality. The progress bar below keeps you informed — the page stays responsive throughout.
Drag & drop a scanned PDF here
or click to browse — image-based PDFs work best
PDF files only — up to 50MB each
AdFrequently Asked Questions
Is it safe to OCR my files here?
Yes. Rendering and OCR all happen locally in your browser — your PDF never leaves your device. The OCR engine downloads its language data once, but your documents are not uploaded anywhere.
Why does OCR take so long?
OCR reads each page as an image and recognizes every character, which takes real time (several seconds per page, more for dense scans). The progress bar shows exactly where it is up to.
How accurate is the extracted text?
Accuracy depends on scan quality. Clean 300 DPI scans of printed text usually come out very well; blurry, skewed or handwritten scans will have errors. Try higher-resolution scans for best results.
What's the difference between the TXT and searchable PDF outputs?
The .txt file contains just the recognized text. The searchable PDF keeps your original scanned pages but overlays the recognized words invisibly, so you can select, copy and search the text in any PDF viewer.
My PDF already has selectable text — do I need this?
Probably not. This tool is for image-only scans. If your PDF already has a text layer, you can copy text directly, though you can still run OCR if the existing layer is bad.