Drop a scanned PDF here
or browse file
When to use OCR PDF
Text Extraction
Extracting text from scanned books, magazines, or printed documents for editing or searching
Document Digitization
Digitizing paper documents that were scanned as images into searchable, selectable PDFs
Image Conversion
Converting image-based PDFs from fax machines or older scanners into usable text documents
Searchable Documents
Making scanned contracts and forms searchable so you can find keywords instantly
How to OCR a Scanned PDF — Step by Step
Upload your scanned PDF
Drag and drop a scanned PDF or browse to select it
Select language
Choose the document language for optimal OCR accuracy (e.g., English, Spanish, French)
Start OCR processing
Click the “Run OCR” button. The tool processes each page using Tesseract.js to recognize text
Preview the result
Review the extracted text alongside the original pages
Download
Save your PDF with embedded, selectable text, or export just the extracted text
Frequently Asked Questions
✨ How accurate is the OCR?
Accuracy depends on image quality, resolution, and font clarity. Clean, high-resolution scans at 300 DPI typically achieve 95%+ accuracy. Poor quality or handwritten text will have lower accuracy.
📋 What languages are supported?
Tesseract.js supports over 100 languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, and more. Select the correct language for best results.
❓ Does OCR change my original PDF pages?
The OCR tool creates a new PDF with a text layer overlaid on the original scanned images. The original page images remain unchanged — the text is embedded as searchable/selectable content.
📏 Is there a page limit for OCR?
OCR is computationally intensive and runs in your browser. For documents over 30-40 pages, processing may take several minutes. Consider splitting large documents first.