PDF OCR
Extract text from a scanned PDF using optical character recognition.
Drag and drop a PDF file, or click to choose one
Supports PDF files
Usage examples
Pulling text out of a scanned paper document
After scanning or photographing a paper document into a PDF, recognize the text inside it so you can copy and edit it.
Reading a PDF with no text layer
OCR can extract content from image-only PDFs that a plain PDF-to-text tool can't handle, since there's no embedded text to extract.
Recognizing a document in a specific language
Choose the matching language, like English, Korean, or Japanese, to improve recognition accuracy for that document.
Frequently asked questions
Is my uploaded PDF sent to a server?
No. Converting the PDF to images and recognizing text both happen entirely in your browser, and the uploaded PDF or its content is never sent to a server. The one exception is that the recognition model file for your chosen language is downloaded once from a public CDN on first use — this is just a generic program file, unrelated to your document's content.
Can I use this on a regular PDF that already has text?
You can, but if the PDF already has a text layer, our PDF-to-Text tool will be faster and more accurate. OCR is meant for image-only PDFs, like scanned documents.
How accurate is the recognition?
It depends on scan quality, font, and sharpness. High-resolution, crisp documents recognize more accurately, while handwriting or blurry scans may recognize less accurately.
How long does a long PDF take?
Pages are recognized one at a time, so the time scales with the page count. You can cancel at any point during processing if it's taking too long.