PDF OCR Tool

Extract text from scanned PDFs using OCR technology

Choose a PDF file or drag it here

100% Free & Secure. Files are processed in your browser.

Supports PDF only — Max 50MB per file

Only PDF files accepted

📸 Better scans = better results. OCR accuracy depends on your image quality. For the sharpest text, use clear, well-lit scans with straight (not tilted) pages. Faded, blurry, or low-resolution images will reduce accuracy — this is true for every OCR tool, not just ours.

⏳ Processing on your device — please keep this tab open.
Your files are never uploaded to any server. All OCR runs privately in your browser, so larger files and more pages take a little longer — but your data stays 100% yours. Hang tight, it's worth the wait. 🔒

How to Use

How to Run OCR on a Scanned PDF

Drop your PDF onto the tool, or click Choose PDF File to browse for it. The tool takes one PDF at a time.
Select the document language. English is preselected. You can also choose Hindi, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified) or Russian. Pick the language of the text in the scan, because each run reads in one language.
Click Start OCR. Every page is drawn at 2x size and read in turn, with a progress bar showing which page is being worked on. Keep the tab open until it finishes.
Read the result. The text appears in a box, with a line such as === Page 1 === before each page.
Click Copy or Download TXT. Start Over clears everything so you can load another PDF.

Features

What You Get from This PDF OCR Tool

Your file stays on your device. Pages are drawn and read inside your browser with Tesseract. The OCR engine and language data are downloaded when you start, but your PDF is not sent anywhere.
Eight languages. English, Hindi, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified) and Russian.
Every page, in order. The result is one block of text with a marker line before each page, so it is easy to find your place.
Copy it or save it. Copy to the clipboard, or download everything as a .txt file named after your PDF.
Room for real documents. Files up to 50 MB work without an account; a free account raises the limit.

Good to know: the result is plain text, not a searchable PDF. Fonts, tables, columns and images are not kept, and text in side-by-side columns can come out mixed together. Accuracy follows the quality of the scan: clear, straight, well-lit pages read well, while faded or blurry ones and handwriting do not. The tool reads every page, so there is no way to pick a range, and a long PDF can take a while on a phone. Mixed-language documents lose accuracy in the languages you did not select. Password-protected PDFs fail to load. If your PDF already holds real text, PDF to Text is faster and exact, because no guessing is involved.

Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ

How do I get text out of a scanned PDF?

Drop the PDF onto the tool, choose the language of the text and click Start OCR. When it finishes, copy the text or download it as a .txt file.

Is my PDF uploaded to a server?

No. Your file stays on your device. The OCR engine and language data are downloaded to your browser, then the pages are read there.

Which languages can it read?

English, Hindi, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified) and Russian. You choose one per run, so a document in two languages is best read once for each.

Will I get a searchable PDF back?

No. You get the text as plain text only. The original PDF is not changed and no new PDF is created.

Why is the text full of mistakes?

OCR guesses letters from pictures, so blurry, tilted, faded or low-contrast scans cause errors, and handwriting is poorly supported. A sharper scan, or the right language selection, usually helps more than anything else.

Is there a file size limit?

Files up to 50 MB work without an account; a free account raises the limit.

Your Next PDF Task Takes 10 Seconds

No account. No upload queues. No fine print. Just pick a tool and you're done.

Fix My PDF — Free