OCR PDF — Text from Scans, in Your Browser

Tesseract.js · WASM · runs locally · no upload

Drop a scanned PDF and Tesseract runs entirely in your browser to recognise the text on each page. Choose plain text output, or a "searchable PDF" where the original page image stays visible but selectable text sits behind it. OCR is slow — expect tens of seconds per page on a laptop.

When to use this tool

Scanned receipts, old book pages, contracts you only have on paper — anything whose "text" is actually pixels. OCR adds a real text layer you can copy, search, or feed into another tool. The "searchable PDF" mode is best when you need the document to look unchanged but want Ctrl-F to work.

Step by step

1. Drop the PDFs. Each page will be rasterised, then OCR'd.
2. Pick output. Plain text is fastest. Searchable PDF preserves the visual page.
3. Pick a language. If your document is in two languages, pick the dominant one — Tesseract still recognises Latin characters for the other.
4. Click "Run OCR". Expect tens of seconds per page. Status updates show which page is being processed.

FAQ