PDF OCR
Extract text from scanned PDFs and image-only pages with optical character recognition. Each page is rendered and read by the open-source Tesseract engine in your browser, then you can copy the text, download a .txt file, or get a searchable PDF with an invisible text layer.
The interactive tool loads here when JavaScript is enabled. Files are processed locally in your browser.
How to use PDF OCR
- Choose a scanned PDF (up to 50 pages per run).
- Select the pages and the recognition quality.
- Run OCR and watch the page-by-page progress.
- Copy the text, download a .txt file or download a searchable PDF.
Features
- Runs Tesseract OCR locally with English language data hosted on this site.
- Searchable PDF output places invisible text exactly over each recognized word.
- Shows a confidence score for every page so you know what to double-check.
- Pages that already contain digital text can be read directly without OCR.
Supported formats and limitations
Input: scanned or text PDF. Output: plain text (.txt) or a searchable PDF.
- English recognition only.
- Handwriting and low-resolution scans give poor results.
- Long documents take time because every page is processed on your device.
Frequently asked questions
Which languages are supported?
English. Accuracy for other Latin-script languages is lower, and non-Latin scripts are not recognized.
How accurate is the OCR?
Clean, straight scans at 300 DPI often exceed 95% accuracy. Handwriting, low-resolution photos and decorative fonts give poorer results.
Why is OCR slow on long documents?
Every page is rendered and recognized on your own device. Higher quality settings take longer but read small text better.