OCR PDF
Extract text from scanned or image-based PDFs with optical character recognition running in your browser.
Drop PDF files here
or click to browse your files
Max 100 MB per file
Extract text from scanned PDFs with browser-based OCR
OCR converts the visible characters in scanned PDF pages into text you can copy or save. YourPDFs renders each page locally and runs Tesseract OCR in the browser. The OCR language model may be downloaded from its hosting service, but your document pages are not sent there for recognition.
How to use this tool
- Select a scanned or image-based PDF.
- Choose the language that best matches the document.
- Run OCR, review the recognized text, and download it as a TXT file if needed.
Frequently asked questions
Does OCR make my PDF searchable?
Not in this version. The tool extracts recognized text and lets you download it as a text file; it does not add an invisible searchable text layer back into the PDF.
Why is OCR sometimes inaccurate?
Recognition quality depends on scan resolution, contrast, font style, page rotation, handwriting, and the selected language.
Is my scanned PDF uploaded for OCR?
No. PDF pages are rendered and recognized in your browser. The OCR engine may download code or language data, but your selected document is not uploaded to a YourPDFs server.
Can I use OCR before PDF to Word?
Yes, but this OCR tool currently outputs text rather than a new searchable PDF. You can use the extracted text directly, while PDF to Word works best when the original PDF already contains selectable text.