OCR PDF

Extract text from a scanned PDF — the page is rendered and recognized entirely in your browser, nothing is uploaded. Works best on clear scans; handwriting and low-resolution images will be less accurate.

How to use this tool

OCR PDF recognizes text in a scanned PDF — a document that's really just a photograph of a page — and turns it into text you can select, copy, and search.

Select a scanned PDF file.
Click "Run OCR" and let it render and recognize each page (larger files take longer).
Copy the extracted text or download it as a .txt file.

Accuracy depends on scan quality — a clean, straight, well-lit scan will recognize far better than a skewed photo or handwriting.
If your PDF already has selectable text (try clicking and dragging over it), use Extract Text from PDF instead — it's instant and has no recognition errors.