Run OCR on a scanned PDF to make its text searchable and selectable, while the pages keep looking exactly the same. Recognition runs on your device, so the PDF isn't uploaded, and there's no page limit or sign-up.
How to use OCR PDF
Choose a scanned PDF.
Tick the Languages in the document; you can pick more than one.
Choose Skip pages with text or OCR every page.
Click Make searchable and wait for the pages to be recognised.
Click Download searchable PDF, or copy the Recognised text.
Frequently asked questions
What does OCR do to a PDF?
OCR (optical character recognition) reads the text in scanned images and adds an invisible text layer, so you can search, select and copy it. The page images are not changed.
Which languages does the PDF OCR support?
English, Hindi, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese. You can pick more than one for mixed documents.
Can I OCR a Hindi PDF?
Yes. Choose Hindi, and the recognised words are added to the PDF's invisible text layer, so you can search and select them, and they're also shown in the Recognised text panel to copy. The same goes for Arabic, Chinese and Japanese. Only rare characters outside Unicode's basic range, such as some emoji and uncommon CJK characters, are left out of the layer; the result says when that happens.
Is my scanned PDF uploaded for OCR?
No. Recognition runs in your browser with tesseract.js. The language model (a few MB) is downloaded the first time you use a language and then cached, but your PDF stays on your device.
How accurate is the OCR?
Clean, straight scans give the best results; pages are read at about 300 dpi. Blurry photos, handwriting or unusual fonts lead to more mistakes, so check the Recognised text.
Can I edit the text after OCR?
OCR makes text searchable and copyable, not editable on the page. To get an editable document, convert the result with PDF to Word; the page picture comes along too, so delete it in Word if you only want the text.
What the searchable PDF covers
Script
Searchable PDF layer
Copyable text panel
Latin (English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian)
Yes
Yes
Cyrillic (Russian)
Yes
Yes
Devanagari (Hindi), Arabic, Chinese, Japanese
Yes, except rare characters outside Unicode's basic range
Yes
Common uses
Make scanned contracts, statements and notes searchable with Ctrl+F.
Copy text out of a scanned certificate or letter instead of retyping it.
Restore selectable text after Repair PDF or Extreme compression turned pages into images.
Phone scans: capture with Scan to PDF, then OCR the result here.