OCR PDF

Scanned documents and image-based PDFs look like normal files, but the text inside them is locked away as pixels. You cannot search for a word, copy a sentence, or select a paragraph — the content is effectively invisible to software. Our OCR tool changes that by recognizing the text in scanned pages and embedding a searchable, selectable text layer directly into the PDF.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) analyzes each page image, identifies letterforms, and reconstructs the text with high accuracy. The result is a PDF that looks exactly like the original scan but behaves like a native digital document. You can search for keywords with Ctrl+F, copy text to paste elsewhere, and feed the document to downstream workflows that require machine-readable text — like translation software, document management systems, or data extraction pipelines.

The OCR engine supports multiple languages and handles a variety of typefaces, from standard office fonts to condensed technical print. Accuracy depends on scan quality: clear, straight, high-resolution scans (300 DPI or higher) produce the best results. Slightly skewed or lower-resolution scans are still processed, though accuracy may decrease for small or tightly spaced text.

Common use cases include digitizing legacy archives, making scanned contracts searchable for legal review, converting photographed receipts into text-selectable records, and preparing scanned academic papers for citation extraction. Government agencies, law firms, medical offices, and university libraries are among the heaviest users of OCR tooling.

The text layer is placed behind the original page image, so the visual appearance of the document is unchanged. Recipients who open the file see the same scan they would have seen before, but they can now interact with the text.

Processing happens in the cloud over encrypted connections. Files are deleted automatically within one hour. Free users can OCR documents up to 10 pages. Pro plans support documents with hundreds of pages and additional language packs.