OCR runs optical character recognition on scanned PDFs or images to add a searchable, selectable text layer underneath the original page image — the page looks identical but the text can now be copied, searched, or read by a screen reader.
This is the sweet spot for most documents. Use 600 DPI for very small print.
Grayscale scans are smaller and usually recognize just as well as color.
Curved book pages and tilted scans reduce accuracy. Press the page flat and line it up with the glass.
Even lighting matters for phone scans — avoid shadows from your hand or phone.
Best results come from 300 DPI scans with good contrast.
Scanned PDFs, phone scans and image-only PDFs all work.
Pick the document's language, or let auto-detect choose.
An invisible text layer is added under each page image, so the page looks the same as before.
Download the PDF and use Ctrl+F, copy text, or read it with a screen reader.
Libraries OCR scanned books to make content searchable in digital catalogs and accessible to screen readers.
Legal ops teams OCR scanned contracts to enable full-text search across the contract repository.
Finance teams OCR photos of receipts to extract merchant names, amounts, and dates into expense reports.
No — the visual page stays identical; OCR only adds an invisible, searchable text layer underneath.
95-99% accuracy on clear printed text at 300+ DPI. Handwriting and low-quality scans achieve 70-85% accuracy. Best results from 300-600 DPI grayscale scans.
20+ languages including English (US/UK), Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Chinese (Simplified/Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, and more.
Yes. Advanced layout analysis detects columns, tables, footnotes, and reading order, producing correctly-flowing extracted text.
Limited. The OCR tool is optimized for printed text. Handwriting recognition achieves 70-85% accuracy on clear cursive — neat printing works better.
Unlock first with our Unlock PDF tool. Encrypted PDFs cannot be OCR'd directly.
5-15 seconds per page. A 50-page PDF typically OCRs in 1-3 minutes. Multi-language detection adds slight processing time.
Yes — 30 OCR operations per day for guests, more on free accounts. No watermark on output.
