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PDF OCR

Extract text from scanned PDFs using optical character recognition. Supports 14 languages, shows confidence scores — everything runs in your browser, nothing is uploaded.

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Convert Scanned PDFs to Text

Drop your scanned PDF and OCR starts automatically. Each page is rendered and processed in sequence. Select your language for best accuracy.

Drop your scanned PDF here
or click to browse — OCR starts automatically
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Extracted Text
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How PDF OCR Works

PDFToolShack’s PDF OCR tool uses PDF.js to render each page of your scanned PDF as a high-resolution image, then feeds those images to Tesseract.js — the industry-standard open-source OCR engine — to extract the text. Everything runs in your browser. Your PDF never leaves your device.

This tool is designed for scanned PDFs — documents created by scanning paper pages where the content is an image, not selectable text. For PDFs created digitally (Word exports, InDesign, etc.) with embedded text, use our faster Extract Text tool instead.

For best accuracy: use high-resolution scans (300 DPI or above), ensure good contrast between text and background, and select the correct language. The confidence score shown after processing gives you a guide to result quality — above 85% is generally excellent.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the difference between this and Extract Text?
Extract Text reads the embedded text layer from digital PDFs — it’s instant but only works if the PDF has selectable text. PDF OCR renders each page as an image and uses optical character recognition to read it — it works on scanned PDFs but takes longer since it’s doing actual image analysis.
Is my PDF uploaded to a server?
No. All processing happens in your browser using PDF.js and Tesseract.js, both open-source JavaScript libraries. Your PDF never leaves your device and no data is sent to any server.
Why does it take a while to start?
The first time you use this tool, Tesseract.js downloads the OCR language model for your selected language (2–10 MB depending on language). This is cached by your browser so subsequent runs in the same session are much faster.
How accurate is the OCR?
For clear, high-resolution scans with standard fonts, accuracy is typically 95–99%. Results are lower for handwriting, decorative fonts, low-resolution scans, or images with complex backgrounds. The confidence score gives you a rough guide after processing.
Can I change the language after running OCR?
Yes — use the Language dropdown that appears after your first OCR run, then click Re-run OCR to process the same PDF with the new language model. Useful for documents with mixed-language content.
Can it read handwriting?
Tesseract is optimised for printed text. Neat block-capital handwriting may produce reasonable results, but cursive or irregular handwriting will typically be inaccurate. For handwriting recognition, a dedicated AI-powered tool gives better results.