Short answer
Pick the document language, run Tesseract in your browser, and download a searchable PDF. Proofread numbers and names — OCR is never perfect.
Stays on your device·No upload·No account·No watermark·Offline after install·How it worksMethodologyPrivacy
OCR PDF Online
Make scanned pages searchable with browser OCR — free, private, no upload.
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About this tool
OCR PDF online for free — make scanned or image-heavy pages searchable with browser OCR (Tesseract). English is the default.
Invisible text is fitted to word boxes — good enough for find and copy, not Adobe glyph-perfect. Multi-page docs can take a few minutes; low-confidence words are skipped to reduce garbage text.
Run this before PDF to Word or Extract text on scans. Nothing is uploaded.
How to use OCR PDF Online
- 1Open a scanned or image-heavy PDF.
- 2Choose searchable PDF or plain text.
- 3Run OCR (multi-page docs can take a few minutes) and download.
You need
- A PDF (usually scanned/image pages)
- A few minutes for multi-page docs
Common use cases
- Make a scanned binder searchable with Ctrl+F.
- Prepare scans for PDF to Word or text extract.
- Index archived paper documents on your own machine.
Frequently asked questions
Is OCR perfect?
No. Text placement is good enough for search and copy, not glyph-perfect. Low-confidence words are skipped to reduce garbage text.Does OCR run on a server?
No. Tesseract.js runs in your browser. Multi-page docs can take a few minutes.Is OCR PDF free with no watermark?
Yes — free, no account, and no watermark on the searchable PDF.