Recognize Text via OCR
Extract text from scanned PDFs and images using optical character recognition.
Extract Text from Any PDF - Free OCR Tool
Scanned PDFs and image-based documents look like normal files but contain no readable text layer - they are photographs of pages. Our OCR PDF tool analyzes each page image and recognizes the characters using Tesseract, then delivers the extracted text as a plain text file you can copy, edit, or paste into other tools. Processing runs entirely in your browser using a WebAssembly build of the OCR engine - your file never leaves your device.
What OCR Does and When You Need It
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. When a document is scanned, photographed, or exported from a system that rasterizes pages, the resulting PDF has no text data - only pixel images of letters. PDF viewers display these files correctly, but you cannot select text, use Ctrl+F to search, or copy a sentence. OCR solves this by examining the visual shapes on each page and identifying which characters they represent.
You need OCR when:
- You have a scanned contract, invoice, or form and need to copy text from it
- Your PDF was created from a photograph or a fax and is not searchable
- You want to extract text from a scanned document before converting it with the PDF to Word tool
- You need to make archived documents searchable for compliance or record-keeping
- You received a PDF where the text appears as an image and cannot be selected
How Our OCR Tool Works
- Upload your file - drop in a scanned PDF or an image file (JPG, PNG, WebP). The file is read locally by your browser and never sent to any server.
- Select language - choose the language of the document text. Tesseract loads the corresponding trained character model for that language to improve recognition accuracy.
- Choose pages - process the full document or specify individual pages or ranges.
- Run OCR - Tesseract analyzes each page image in your browser using WebAssembly and extracts the recognized text.
- Download results - save the extracted text as a plain .txt file or copy it directly to your clipboard. To edit the content as a document, paste the text into the PDF editor or use it as a source for the PDF to Word converter after running OCR on the original scanned file.
What Affects OCR Accuracy
OCR accuracy depends on the quality of the source document. High-resolution scans with clear, dark text on a white background produce the best results. Common factors that reduce accuracy include low scan resolution, skewed or rotated pages, handwritten text, decorative fonts, colored backgrounds, watermarks overlapping text, and heavy compression artifacts. Selecting the correct language before processing also makes a significant difference, as Tesseract uses language-specific character and word models to resolve ambiguous characters.
If you want to learn more about how OCR technology works and the best ways to handle scanned documents, our blog article on OCR for PDF files covers the key techniques and when to use them in plain language.
FAQ
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. It works by analyzing the pixel content of each page image and identifying character shapes using pattern recognition models trained on large sets of text samples. The recognized characters are assembled into words and lines. This tool uses Tesseract running as a WebAssembly module in your browser, so no file is uploaded to any server during the process.
No. The OCR engine runs entirely in your browser as a WebAssembly module. Your file is read locally by the browser File API and processed on your device. No data is transmitted to any server at any point.
A scanned PDF is created by photographing or scanning a physical page. The result is a raster image - a grid of pixels - with no underlying text data. PDF viewers render the image correctly so it looks like a normal document, but there is no text layer for the viewer to search or select. OCR reads the pixel content and identifies the characters, producing selectable text from the recognized content.
OCR is primarily designed for printed or typed text and is not reliable for handwriting. Handwritten characters vary significantly between individuals in shape, size, spacing, and slant, which makes accurate recognition much harder than for printed fonts. The tool may extract some handwritten words correctly, particularly if the writing is neat and consistent, but accuracy on handwritten documents is generally low.
Run the scanned PDF through the OCR tool first to extract the text. Then take that extracted text and use the PDF to Word tool on the original scanned file, or paste the extracted text directly into a Word document. The PDF to Word converter works best on text-based PDFs - running OCR first gives you the raw text content you need.
No. This tool extracts the recognized text and delivers it as a plain .txt file or clipboard copy. It does not modify the original PDF in any way. The PDF file itself is unchanged - only the extracted text is returned as output.
The tool supports 19 languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Arabic, Hindi, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, and Thai. Select the language of your document from the dropdown before processing. Tesseract loads the language-specific trained data model for the selected language, which significantly improves recognition accuracy compared to using the wrong language setting.
Yes. The tool lets you specify which pages to process using the pages field. Enter individual page numbers separated by commas, or ranges using a hyphen, for example 1, 3, 5-7. Pages not included in the selection are skipped. This is useful for large documents where only certain pages are scanned images and you only need text from those specific pages.
OCR accuracy depends on the quality of the source image. Common causes of missing or incorrect text include low scan resolution, skewed pages, faded ink, text that overlaps with images or watermarks, unusual fonts, and heavy JPEG compression artifacts. Scanning at 300 DPI or higher with good contrast between text and background produces the most accurate results. If recognition quality is poor, rescanning the original document at higher resolution before running OCR will give significantly better output.
Yes. The tool accepts JPG, PNG, GIF, and WebP image files in addition to PDF. When you upload an image, Tesseract processes it directly and extracts the recognized text. This is useful for extracting text from photographs of documents, screenshots, or scanned pages that were saved as images rather than PDFs.