OCR a scanned PDF

Free — no limit · runs on your device

Drop the scan

Or click to browse. The picture of your page is never changed — the words are laid over it, invisibly, so it can be searched and copied.

PDF · up to 100 pages · read in this tab, never uploaded

Settings

What you get

Your page, untouched, with the words laid over it.

OCR is a guess, not a reading. Handwriting will not work.

What it can and cannot do

The picture is not re-encoded, sharpened or "cleaned" — it comes back exactly as you gave it, with the text sitting on top where nothing can see it but a search box.

A crooked or faint scan gives crooked, faint results, so the right-hand pane marks every word it scored under 70% rather than hand you a clean-looking lie. The number is there so you can disagree with it.

Language

Downloaded once from this site, then kept by your browser.

What it read

—words

Open a scan and this fills in with what was actually read.

Privacy

Nothing is uploaded — and it matters most here. A scan is usually an ID, a contract or a payslip, and every other free OCR sends it to a server.

Your settings are kept while you pick it.

Read in this tab. Your scan is never uploaded.