OCR PDF: Make scanned PDFs searchable and extract their text. Input: Text you type or paste, image, PDF files and values you enter. Output: Results shown on the page, a downloaded file and text to copy. Privacy: Runs in your browser: inputs and files stay on your device and are not uploaded.
How to OCR a scanned PDF
- Drop a scanned PDF on the box.
- Choose the document's language, and a second language if it is mixed.
- Leave Also create a searchable PDF ticked (it is on by default here) to get a PDF in which the text can be selected, searched and copied.
- Press Recognise text. Each page is rendered and recognised; the progress bar shows how far it has got. Then copy the text or download the text file and searchable PDF.
Why make PDFs searchable?
A scanned PDF is just a stack of pictures: you cannot search it, copy a sentence from it or have it read aloud by a screen reader. Optical character recognition adds an invisible text layer behind each page image, so the document looks the same but behaves like a digital file. That makes archives of letters, contracts, receipts and old reports findable with Ctrl+F and in your computer's search, and makes them accessible.
Recognition uses Tesseract, an open-source OCR engine, running in your browser with WebAssembly. It works best on clean, straight, printed pages scanned at 200–300 dpi. Large documents take a while, because every page is processed on your own device rather than on a server; in exchange, your documents stay private.
Example: a poor office scan
Our test is a 2-page text document scanned badly: 150 dpi, slightly crooked, blurred and noisy. Every word was recognised correctly; only about 1 character in 2,500 differed from the original, a capital letter or a punctuation mark. On the same scan, the Tesseract command-line tool with its standard language data got about 1 word in 90 wrong. The searchable PDF was only 1% larger than the scan.
How it compares with free PDF sites
| This tool | iLovePDF (free) | Sejda (free) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| File size | Your device memory | 15 MB | 50 MB |
| Pages | No fixed limit | Not stated | 10 |
| Tasks per day | No limit | Not stated | 3 |
Free-plan limits as published by each service (checked 21 October 2026): iLovePDF pricing, Sejda pricing. They change often; the paid plans lift them.
FAQ
How long does OCR take?
Usually a few seconds per page on a modern computer, longer on phones and for dense pages.
Is the searchable PDF the same size?
It can be larger, because each page is stored as an image plus a text layer. Use Compress PDF if needed.
Which languages are supported?
More than 30, including English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Hindi.
How do I make a scanned PDF searchable?
Drop it here, choose its language and press Recognise text, then download the searchable PDF. The pages look the same, but now you can search, select and copy the text.