OCR PDF in your browser
A scanned PDF is just a picture of text. You can’t search it, copy from it, or quote it. OCR fixes that. Pick up to 10 pages, let the Tesseract engine read them right in your browser, and download a searchable PDF or plain text. Your scans never go to a cloud OCR service.
- Text recognition runs on your device using Tesseract, not a cloud API.
- Download a searchable PDF, a plain-text file, or both.
- Choose which pages to process, up to 10 per run.
- A good fit for medical, legal, and financial scans you’d rather not upload.
How to use OCR PDF
- Choose a scanned PDF and pick up to 10 pages.
- Click Recognize text.
- Check the recognized text, then download the searchable PDF or the text file.
Technical notes & limits
- Printed English text only, up to 10 pages per run.
- Handwriting, faint scans, tilted pages, and complex multi-column layouts may produce errors.
OCR that stays on your device
Most online OCR tools send your pages to a remote server. Here, each page is rendered in high resolution inside your browser and read by a Tesseract engine compiled to WebAssembly and set up for English. The text never leaves your device.
Better scans, better results
OCR works best on sharp, straight, printed English text with good contrast. Tilted pages, fuzzy faxes, fancy fonts, dense tables, and handwriting cause mistakes. Always double-check names, dates, and numbers against the original page.
Frequently asked questions
Does OCR PDF support languages other than English?
Not yet. It currently includes only the English model and works best on printed text.
Why is OCR limited to 10 pages per run?
OCR is heavy work for a browser. Capping each run at 10 pages keeps things responsive and stops your tab from running out of memory.
What is the difference between the text download and the searchable PDF?
The text download is a plain .txt file of the recognized words. The searchable PDF keeps the original page image and adds an invisible text layer, so you can search and highlight in any PDF viewer.