OCR PDF
Scanned pages are pictures — your computer sees ink, not words, so Ctrl+F finds nothing. This tool applies optical character recognition (OCR): it reads the characters in the image and adds a hidden text layer on top, leaving the scan visually untouched. Useful for archived invoices, contracts signed on paper or book pages you photographed. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic are recognised. Scanned documents are limited to 10 pages, as each page is analysed image by image.
Click or drop your file here
.pdf
How it works
1
Import
Drop your scanned PDF
2
Recognise
Characters are read
3
Download
Get a searchable PDF
Features
No visual change
— the original scan is preserved pixel for pixel.Search and copy
— Ctrl+F works, and text can be selected like in any PDF.Mixed documents
— pages that already contain text are left alone.Five languages
— English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic.Common use cases
Paper invoices archived as scans that you need to search by supplier or amount.
A contract signed on paper, scanned back, where you must find a specific clause.
Book or article pages photographed for study, to quote a passage without retyping it.
Old administrative records digitised in bulk and impossible to browse.
Supported documents
Any PDF whose pages are images: scanner output, photocopier output, or photos of paper turned into a PDF. Printed text gives excellent results. Handwriting is not reliably recognised. Scanned documents are limited to 10 pages per file; a PDF that already contains text can go up to 50.
Tips for the best conversion
Scan at 300 dpi — below 200 dpi, characters blur together and errors multiply.
Keep pages straight; a sheet scanned at an angle loses accuracy.
Prefer plain black on white over coloured or textured backgrounds.
Set the site language to the language of your document before uploading.
Your files are handled securely
Your file is processed securely on our servers, then automatically deleted right after processing. It is never shared or kept.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know if my PDF needs OCR?
Open it and try to select a line of text with your mouse, or press Ctrl+F and search for a word you can see on screen. If nothing can be selected and the search finds nothing, the page is an image and OCR is what you need.
Will the document still look the same?
Yes. The original scan is left untouched and the recognised text is added as an invisible layer on top. Visually nothing changes — you simply gain the ability to search, select and copy.
Which languages can be recognised?
English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic. Pick the language of your document using the site language before uploading, as recognition accuracy depends heavily on the correct language being used.
Why are some words wrong in the result?
Recognition quality depends on the scan. Blurred pages, low resolution, skewed sheets, handwriting or unusual fonts all reduce accuracy. A clean scan at 300 dpi gives by far the best results; a photo taken at an angle in poor light gives the worst.
What happens to pages that already contain text?
They are left exactly as they are. A document can freely mix scanned pages and normal pages — only the image pages are processed, so nothing already correct gets rewritten.
Why is the limit 10 pages for a scan?
Each page of a scan is rebuilt as an image before being read, which takes around eight seconds. Ten pages keeps the wait under a minute and a half and stops one large document from slowing the service down for everyone else. For a longer scan, split it first with our Split PDF tool.