Skip to content
FreeToolsDaily

OCR: scanned PDF & image to text

Turn scans and photos of documents into real, searchable, copyable text.

Free No sign-up Files stay on your device

How it works

How to use the OCR PDF tool

  1. 1

    Upload a scan

    Choose a scanned PDF or a photo (JPG, PNG, WebP).

  2. 2

    Pick the language

    Select the document’s language — add a second one for mixed text.

  3. 3

    Get your text

    Download the text, plus a searchable PDF you can search and copy from.

How OCR works here

FreeToolsDaily uses Tesseract, a leading open-source OCR engine originally developed by HP and later Google, compiled to run inside your browser. Each page is rendered at 300 DPI and analysed for characters. Because it runs locally, confidential documents like IDs and contracts never leave your device.

Tips for better accuracy

Use straight, well-lit, high-contrast scans; crop out dark borders; choose the correct language. Printed text gives excellent results; handwriting is not reliably recognised.

Limitations

We’d rather be upfront about what this tool can’t do yet:

  • Handwriting, very small text and heavily stylised fonts recognise poorly.
  • The first run downloads the engine and language data (≈10–20 MB), then it’s cached.
  • Large PDFs take a few seconds per page.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Are my files uploaded?

No. Everything runs inside your browser on your own device, so your files are never sent to FreeToolsDaily or anyone else.

Which languages are supported?

English, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Kannada, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Japanese and Korean.

What is a searchable PDF?

A PDF that looks like your scan but has an invisible text layer, so you can search with Ctrl+F and copy text.

Is OCR 100% accurate?

No OCR is perfect. Expect very high accuracy on clean printed documents, and always proofread important text.

Keep going

Related tools

All pdf tools