OCR PDF — Make Scanned PDFs Searchable
Make scanned PDFs searchable and selectable. Runs entirely in your browser.
Best for scanned contracts or archived documents you need to search or copy text from.
▸▾OCR is CPU-intensive
Recognition runs on your device — not a server. Expect a few seconds per page. For large batches, process in smaller groups. Speed depends on your device.
Drop files here
or click to browse · paste from clipboard
Accepts .PDF · Up to 1,000 files
How it works
Drop your files
Drag and drop, click to browse, or paste from clipboard. Up to 1,000 files at once.
Choose settings
Adjust quality, format, and other options to match your needs.
Click Convert
Everything runs in your browser via WebAssembly. OCR PDF — Make Scanned PDFs Searchable happens locally — no server involved.
Download
Download files individually or grab all at once as a ZIP.
Frequently asked questions
No. OCR runs entirely in your browser using Tesseract.js and WebAssembly. Your PDF never leaves your device. Language model files (~10–15 MB per language) are downloaded from a public CDN on first use and cached — that is the only network request during processing.
PDFs made from scans — pages that are images with no selectable text. Common sources: documents photographed and exported to PDF, fax-to-PDF output, or PDFs exported from a scanner. If you can already select text in your PDF, it does not need OCR.
No. In Searchable PDF mode, the original scan is preserved exactly. An invisible text layer is added underneath — you cannot see it, but Ctrl+F, screen readers, and copy-paste can find the text.
Three common causes: wrong language selected (fix this first), low scan resolution (below 150 DPI accuracy drops sharply), or unusual fonts and handwriting. Tesseract is trained on printed text — handwriting is not supported.
Searchable PDF keeps the original scan layout and adds a hidden text layer on top. Extract text outputs just the recognised words in a plain .txt file with no images. Use Extract text when you only care about the content, not the layout.
OCR runs on your device's CPU rather than a server — the tradeoff is that your document never leaves your browser. A few seconds per page is normal; a 20-page document may take a minute on a mid-range laptop.