OCR PDF
Make scanned PDFs searchable for free in your browser: OCR in 24 languages adds an invisible text layer, so you can search, select and copy the text.
What it does
A scanned PDF is a picture of each page: it looks like text but you cannot search it, select it or copy it. This tool reads every page with OCR (the Tesseract engine) and writes the words it finds as invisible text on top of the original page, in the same place. The PDF looks exactly the same, but searching, selecting and copying now work, and so does indexing by search engines and document systems.
How to use it
- Choose the scanned PDF.
- Choose the language of the document; pages that already have text are skipped.
- Click "Make searchable" and download the PDF when it is ready.
Frequently asked questions
Does the PDF look different?
No. The original pages stay as they are, at full quality; the text layer is invisible and only shows when you select or search.
How accurate is it?
For clean printed pages in Latin-script languages, usually more than 99% of characters are right. Handwriting, low-resolution scans, stamps and tables read worse, so check important numbers. The result shows the average confidence.
Why is it slow?
Each page is read in your browser at 300 dpi, which takes a few seconds per page on a computer and more on a phone. Nothing is sent to a server, so speed depends on your device.
Can I OCR a redacted PDF?
Yes. Redacted pages become images, and OCR makes their visible text searchable again; what was blacked out stays black and is not read.
Is my PDF uploaded?
No. The pages are read and the PDF is written in your browser; nothing is sent to a server.
🔡 Image to Text (OCR)
⬛ Redact PDF
📘 PDF to Word
Wikipedia — Optical character recognition
Wikipedia — Tesseract (software)