OCR PDF
Extract text from scanned PDFs. Runs in your browser — no upload.
Drop your scanned PDF here
or click to choose a file
Your file never leaves your browser — processed locally, nothing uploaded
Extract text from scanned PDFs. Runs in your browser — no upload.
Extract text from scanned PDFs, make them searchable, and copy content — directly in your browser using OCR (Optical Character Recognition). No software to install, no account required, and your files never leave your device.
Drag and drop or click Choose PDF. PDFree automatically detects whether your PDF has a text layer or is a pure scanned image.
For scanned PDFs: click Install OCR Engine to load Tesseract.js (~17 MB, one-time download). Select your document language from the dropdown. Text-layer PDFs skip this step entirely.
Click the Make PDF Searchable button. The text recognition engine processes each page locally — nothing is uploaded. A progress bar shows estimated time remaining.
Your PDF downloads automatically when text recognition finishes. The original appearance is unchanged; only an invisible text layer is added so you can search, select, and copy text in any PDF reader.
PDFree automatically detects which type of PDF you have. Text-layer PDFs (most PDFs created digitally — from Word, Google Docs, or any modern application) already contain machine-readable text embedded in the file — extraction is instant and no OCR engine is needed. Scanned PDFs (photos of pages, fax documents, older archive scans, CamScanner exports) contain only images and require OCR to convert pixels into selectable, searchable text.
PDFree uses Tesseract.js, a leading open-source text recognition engine, and supports 18 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Uzbek, Dutch, Polish, Turkish (European scripts) and Arabic, Japanese, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Korean, Hindi, Thai (complex scripts). Select your language from the dropdown before running OCR — accuracy depends on choosing the correct language model.
After OCR, PDFree shows a quality score (Excellent / Good / Fair / Poor) based on Tesseract's word confidence. The main factors:
The searchable PDF keeps your original scanned images exactly as they were and adds an invisible text layer on top. Open it in any PDF reader and you can select text, use Ctrl+F to search, and copy content — the visual appearance is unchanged. Use this for archiving, sharing, or long-term storage.
The .txt file contains only the extracted plain text with page separators. Use this when you need to edit the content in Word or Google Docs, feed text into another tool, or process it programmatically. Enable "Also download .txt copy" in the options to get both files at once.
Scanned documents often contain sensitive content — contracts, medical records, personal letters, tax forms. With PDFree, nothing is ever uploaded. The OCR engine (Tesseract.js) is downloaded once and then runs entirely inside your browser tab. There are no servers receiving your files, no cloud storage, and no data collection of any kind. Open DevTools → Network tab while processing to verify: zero file uploads.
Once the Tesseract.js engine is downloaded on your first OCR run (~17 MB, cached by your browser), PDFree OCR works completely offline. No internet connection is needed to process subsequent documents. This makes it suitable for environments with restricted network access — legal offices, medical facilities, classified document review, or anywhere you cannot send files to an external server. The service worker caches the application shell, so even the UI loads offline after the first visit.
Yes, completely free. No subscription, no premium tier, no per-file charges. Tesseract.js is open-source and runs in your browser.
Never. All processing — including OCR — happens inside your browser tab. Your PDF never leaves your device. The Tesseract.js engine is downloaded from a CDN once and cached; after that it runs fully offline.
No. PDFree adds an invisible text layer (rendering mode Invisible, per the PDF specification) over your original scanned pages. The appearance does not change — images, layout, and formatting stay exactly as they were. You gain the ability to search, select, and copy text in any PDF reader.
Tesseract.js is about 17 MB. To keep the page fast for everyone, it is only downloaded when you actually need it. Once downloaded, it is cached by your browser and works offline on future visits.
18 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Uzbek, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Korean, Hindi, and Thai. Select your document language from the dropdown before running OCR.
OCR accuracy depends on the original scan quality. Low DPI (below 150), blurry or skewed pages, colored backgrounds, and handwritten text all reduce confidence scores. For best results: scan at 300 DPI or higher, good lighting, straight alignment, and select the correct language.
PDFree OCR supports files up to 200 MB. On mobile (iOS/iPadOS), processing is limited to the first 30 pages to prevent memory issues — split the PDF first to process the rest. There are no limits on desktop browsers.
The searchable PDF keeps your original scanned images and adds an invisible text layer on top — useful for archiving, searching inside a PDF reader, or sharing. The .txt file contains only the extracted plain text with page separators — useful for editing in Word, importing into other tools, or copying content. You can download both at the same time using the "Also download .txt copy" checkbox.
OCR is useful any time you have a document as an image and need to work with the text inside it:
| Who | Typical use |
|---|---|
| Legal | Search old contracts and court documents scanned from paper |
| Students | Copy text from scanned textbooks, highlight passages, import into notes |
| Accounting | Make scanned invoices and receipts searchable for audit trails |
| Healthcare | Digitize paper patient records while keeping files private — nothing leaves your device |
| Researchers | Make scanned academic papers and archive documents searchable |
| Government / HR | Archive paper forms and convert them to searchable digital records |
| Feature | PDFree | Typical online OCR |
|---|---|---|
| File processing | In your browser — local only | File uploaded to a server |
| Account required | No | Often required |
| Output | Searchable PDF + optional .txt | .txt only in many tools |
| Original layout | Preserved exactly | Often reformatted |
| Price | Free, no limits | Free tier often page-limited |
| Works offline | Yes, after first load | No |
To convert a scanned PDF to editable text, use PDFree in two steps: first run OCR to create a searchable PDF (above), then open the result in PDF to Word — the tool converts the embedded text layer into a fully editable .docx file. The entire process runs locally; your document is never uploaded anywhere. For plain text output, enable the "Also download .txt copy" checkbox during OCR and skip the Word conversion entirely.