PDF OCR — Turn Scanned Images Into Selectable Text

Scanned PDFs are just images — you can't search them, select text, or copy anything. Our OCR tool recognizes the text in each page image and makes it fully searchable and selectable. No sign-up required.

How It Works

Upload a scanned PDF and get back a searchable version in minutes.

STEP 1

Upload Your Scanned PDF

Drop your scanned PDF into the upload area or click to select a file. Files up to 10 MB are supported for free.

STEP 2

We Recognize the Text

Our server reads every page image and identifies each character, word, and sentence — just like your eyes do when you read a physical page.

STEP 3

Download the Searchable PDF

You get back the same PDF, visually identical, but now every word is searchable and selectable. Copy, search, and paste — it all works.

From Static Image to Living Document

One click turns a dead scan into a PDF you can actually use.

Search Inside Any Scanned PDF

Use Ctrl+F to find any word in documents that were previously completely unsearchable. No more scrolling through pages to find what you need.

Select and Copy Text

Highlight and copy sentences, paragraphs, or entire pages from scanned documents — just like you would with a regular PDF.

PRO

Batch OCR Processing

Process up to 5 scanned PDFs in a single session. Upload them all at once and download each searchable result individually.

Improves Low-Quality Scans

Old or blurry scans often contain fuzzy, unreadable text. The recognition process re-renders the detected text cleanly on top of the image.

Files Deleted After 1 Hour

Your uploaded PDFs and results are permanently deleted from our servers within 60 minutes. Nothing is stored, shared, or retained.

Works in Any Language

Recognizes 24 languages including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Hindi, Thai, Vietnamese, and all major European languages — automatically.

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know about making scanned PDFs searchable.

What is a scanned PDF and why can't I search it?

When you scan a paper document, the scanner takes a photo of the page. That photo is saved inside a PDF file — but it's still just an image. There's no actual text data, so searching, copying, and selecting don't work. OCR (text recognition) reads those images and adds a hidden text layer, making the document fully functional.

No. The original scanned images are kept exactly as they are. The recognized text is added as an invisible layer underneath. The PDF looks completely identical — but now every word is searchable and selectable.

A short document (1–5 pages) usually finishes in under 30 seconds. Longer documents with many pages may take 1–3 minutes. Please keep the tab open while processing.

24 languages are supported automatically, including Arabic, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. The right language is selected automatically based on your current site language.

Yes. All uploads use encrypted connections. Processing happens on our private servers with no human access. All uploaded files and results are automatically and permanently deleted within 60 minutes. We never use your documents for any purpose beyond the processing you requested.

Pages that already have selectable text are automatically skipped — there's no need to process them. Only image-based pages are recognized. This is intentional and saves processing time.