PDF — Free

OCR a scanned PDF

Turn scans and photos into searchable, copyable text.

  1. 01Drop
  2. 02Adjust
  3. 03Download
Ready. Free
01 — Steps

How to OCR a scanned PDF

  1. Add the scan

    Drop a scanned PDF or a photo of a page.

  2. Choose language

    Pick the document language. First use downloads its language file once; after that it works offline.

  3. Download

    Get a searchable PDF and a plain .txt of everything recognised.

02 — Questions

Frequently asked questions

Which languages are supported?
English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese. Non-Latin scripts are complete in the .txt but only partial in the PDF layer.
How accurate is it?
Clean, upright scans at 200 DPI or better read well. Handwriting, skew, low resolution and unusual fonts reduce accuracy; check the text before relying on it.
How long does it take?
Expect a few seconds per page. Long scans are processed page by page with a progress bar.
03 — Related
04 — More

More pdf tools

All pdf tools