OCR PDF

Pull the text out of scanned, image-only PDFs — each page is read by OCR and saved as text. Free in your browser — no sign-up, no watermarks.

Drop your PDF files here

or click to browse — Select multiple files for batch conversion

pdf

⚡ Instant — conversion starts the moment you add files. No sign-up, no watermarks. Why FileHugger

🔍 How your file is processed

Runs: In your browser on this page
Engine: Tesseract.js (WASM) — the OCR engine and the one language model you choose are downloaded to your browser on first use
Max input: 512 MB per file
Your file: Processed in this browser tab — the file is not uploaded. Converted results are kept in this browser's local storage for up to two hours so their matching download page can show them; expired results are removed on the next site visit. Nothing is stored on our servers.
Good to know: Recognition quality depends on scan resolution, contrast and skew — and on picking the right language, which matters more than any of them: an English model reads Turkish “Sözleşme” as “Sozlesme” and a Greek page as punctuation. Twenty-five languages ship; one is used per run. Handwriting is out of scope.

Full security & file-privacy details →

Related converters

How to OCR a scanned PDF

Click Choose files (or drag & drop) and select one or more PDF files. You can also paste an image from your clipboard.
Pick the language the text is in — this matters more than anything else here, because a model reading the wrong language turns accented letters into punctuation. The engine and that one language model download automatically on first use and are cached by your browser, so later runs start instantly.
Press Extract text. Processing runs with a live progress indicator.
Open the download page to save your files individually or grab everything as a single ZIP.

Why OCR a scanned PDF?

Scanned PDFs are photographs of pages: the regular PDF-to-text tool finds nothing in them because there is no text layer. This tool renders every page and runs OCR on it, turning a scanned contract, book chapter or letter into text you can search, copy and edit. Pick the language before you start — twenty-five ship, and the wrong one turns accented letters into punctuation.

What this tool preserves — and what it changes

✓ Preserved

Your file stays in the browser — the OCR engine (Tesseract) downloads to you, not the other way around
Page order: text is extracted page by page, labeled per page

↺ Changed

The output is plain text — layout, columns, fonts and images are not reproduced
Recognition is a best-effort reading, not a copy: numbers, names and tables deserve a proofread

Known limits & edge cases

Choose the English or Turkish recognition model; handwriting and other languages are out of scope
Accuracy tracks scan quality: 300 DPI, straight and high-contrast reads dramatically better than a tilted phone photo
Pages that already contain a text layer don’t need OCR — PDF to TXT extracts them perfectly; the inspection card tells you which case you have

Engine: Tesseract.js (WASM) — the OCR engine and the one language model you choose are downloaded to your browser on first use. These statements describe the engine as shipped on 2026-10-02 — behaviour changes are recorded in the changelog.

About the formats

What is a PDF file?

PDF is the universal document format: it locks layout, fonts and images so a file looks identical on every device and printer. Scans, invoices, forms, e-books and reports all travel as PDF. Because a PDF is a container rather than an image, turning its pages into JPG or PNG pictures — or bundling pictures into a PDF — are among the most common file tasks there are.

What is a TXT file?

TXT is plain, unformatted text — no fonts, no images, no layout, just characters. It opens on absolutely anything and is ideal for notes, logs, code and data exchange. Converting a PDF to TXT extracts its raw text for editing or searching; converting TXT to PDF produces a fixed, printable, shareable document.

Scanned PDFs are photographs — this reads them

A scanned PDF looks like a document but behaves like a photo album: no text to select, nothing for search to find, nothing to copy. OCR renders each page and recognizes the words in the image, returning plain text you can actually use — the searchable version of that archive of scanned contracts, old records and paper mail that exists only as page pictures.

The engine and the language model you picked load once (English is about 11 MB, the other twenty-four one to four) and are cached for future runs, then the document is worked through page by page. Scan quality decides everything: 300 DPI, straight and evenly lit recognizes beautifully; a skewed fax of a photocopy will show its history in the output. Not sure whether a PDF even needs OCR? Try the PDF→Text tool first — if it returns nothing, the file has no text layer, and this is the tool for it.

Guides for this task

Frequently asked questions

Is this OCR PDF tool free?

Yes — completely free, with no sign-up, no watermarks and no daily quota. Processing happens in this browser, so the practical limit is the memory available on your device.

Can I process multiple PDF files at once?

Yes. Add as many files as you like — each one is processed in sequence with its own progress status, and you can download the results individually or all together as a ZIP archive.

Why does the first run take longer?

The engine and the one language model you picked are downloaded on first use and cached by your browser — English is about 11 MB, the other twenty-four are one to four. Later runs in the same language skip the download entirely; switching language fetches just that model.

How is this different from the PDF to TXT tool?

PDF to TXT extracts the digital text layer that born-digital PDFs contain — instant and exact. Scanned PDFs have no text layer, so OCR PDF reads the page images instead. If PDF to TXT gave you an empty result, this is the tool you need.