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OCR a scanned PDF online — add a searchable text layer
Recognise text in scans and add a real searchable text layer.
Drop your file here
or click to browse — one file at a time
How to OCR PDF in your browser
Scanned documents are just pictures until you run OCR. Text recognition reads each page and adds an invisible, selectable text layer so the PDF becomes searchable, copyable and convertible.
- 1Upload the scanned PDF.
- 2Choose the document language.
- 3Run recognition and wait for it to finish.
- 4Download the searchable PDF.
What this OCR PDF online tool does
Real searchable text
The recognised text is embedded in the PDF, not shown in a side panel, so any viewer can search it.
Multi-page scans
Whole documents are processed page by page with progress shown as it runs.
Unlocks other tools
After OCR you can find and replace, search, or convert the scan to Word.
Why people use it
- Free with no account, no email and no watermark
- Runs in the browser — documents stay on your device
- Works on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS
- Also great for make scanned PDF searchable and PDF text recognition free
Frequently asked questions
How accurate is OCR?
- Clean, straight scans at 300 DPI give the best results; faint or skewed pages reduce accuracy.
Does OCR change how the page looks?
- No — the text layer is invisible and sits behind the original scan image.
Related PDF tools
Continue your workflow with another free PDF tool from PaperWorksPDF.
PDF to WordExport the text layer to an editable .docx document.Search inside PDFFull-text search with page hits and instant preview.Find & replace textSearch the text layer and swap words across every page.Compress PDFShrink file size with lossless cleanup or image downsampling.PDF to ExcelSend page content to a .xlsx workbook, one sheet per page.
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