About OCR PDF
OCR (optical character recognition) reads the words in a scanned PDF and gives you them as a plain-text file you can search, copy and edit. It uses the open-source Tesseract engine running in your browser.
How to use OCR PDF
- Add your scanned PDF.
- Choose the document's language — English, Spanish, French or German.
- Press OCR PDF and keep the tab open. Each page takes a few seconds.
- Download the .txt file and check names, numbers and dates carefully.
Tips for better results
- Clear, straight, high-contrast scans give much better results than phone photos taken at an angle.
- Rotate sideways pages first with Rotate PDF.
- Handwriting is generally not recognised reliably.
Limitations
The first run downloads the language data for the OCR engine, which needs an internet connection. The output is plain text — layout, tables and images are not kept.
Frequently asked questions
How accurate is it?
On a clean printed scan accuracy is usually high, but always proofread figures, names and addresses.
If my PDF already has selectable text, do I need OCR?
No — PDF to Text is faster and exact for files that already contain text.
Are my files uploaded?
Your PDF stays in your browser. Only the OCR engine and its language files are downloaded to your device.
Guide last reviewed 28 October 2026 by the ModernExpert.AI team.