What is OCR PDF?
OCR a scanned PDF online free, without uploading it. Adds a selectable, searchable text layer over the pages — processed entirely in your browser. It runs entirely in your browser, so there's no upload, no server involved, and no account required.
When to Use OCR PDF
Use OCR PDF when you need to:
- Document digitization
- Text extraction
- Searchability
How to Use OCR PDF
- 1.Upload your scanned PDF.
- 2.OCR PDF downloads its recognition engine once (a few MB, cached after that) and reads each page's text locally.
- 3.Recognition runs page by page — a few pages take seconds; longer scans take longer, since your device does the work a server farm otherwise would.
- 4.Download the PDF with a selectable, searchable text layer added over the original pages.
Frequently Asked Questions
How accurate is the text recognition?
Very good on clean, printed scans — noticeably weaker on handwriting, low-resolution photos, or heavily skewed pages. It's the same class of engine used by many desktop OCR tools, just running locally instead of on a server.
Why does this take longer than your other tools?
Text recognition is genuinely CPU-intensive work, done page by page. A few pages take seconds; a long scanned document will take longer, since your device is doing what a server farm would otherwise do.
Does it upload my file to recognize the text?
No. The recognition engine itself is downloaded once (a few megabytes, cached after that) — your PDF never is. Everything happens in this browser tab.
Privacy & Security
Your ocr pdf operations are 100% private:
- Nothing is uploaded to a server
- No account or sign-up required
- Works completely offline after the page loads
- All processing happens on your device
- No tracking or analytics on your files
Related Tools
You might also find these tools useful:
PDF to Text
Pull the whole text layer out of a PDF into a plain .txt file you can copy or download.
Compress PDF
Shrink a PDF's file size for email or upload limits, without a server ever seeing it.
Remove PDF Metadata
See what's embedded — title, author, software, timestamps — and strip it all in one click.
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