What online PDF OCR does
A scanned PDF is a picture of a page. It looks like text, but your PDF viewer sees only pixels, which is why search finds nothing. OCR (optical character recognition) reads the words in that picture and writes them into an invisible layer on top of it.
The page looks exactly the same afterwards. The difference is that the words are now real text. For the details, see how to make a PDF searchable.
How it works
- Create an account. It comes with 10 free pages to try it, valid for 7 days, with no credit card.
- Drop in PDFs, JPGs or PNGs, up to 50 files at a time.
- Most files are ready in 10 to 30 seconds. Download each searchable PDF, or all of them as a ZIP.
What you can upload
- Scanned PDFs, including multi-page ones
- JPG and PNG images, such as phone photos of documents. See JPG to searchable PDF.
- Printed text in 100+ languages, detected automatically. See OCR by language.
- Handwriting in widely used languages such as English, Spanish, French and German
If a PDF already has a text layer, it is returned unchanged. When that layer is poor, as with some scanner software, tick Force OCR to replace it.
What's free, and what it costs
Every account starts with 10 free pages to try it, valid for 7 days, with no credit card. That's enough to check the results on your own documents before paying anything.
After that, monthly plans start at $9 for 250 pages, or you can buy a one-off pack of 250 pages for $14.99 or 1,000 pages for $39.99. Pack pages never expire.
See pricing for every plan.
What happens to your files
Files are sent over an encrypted connection, processed, and deleted automatically within an hour. They are never used to train AI models. The security page has the details.
Questions
- Is it free?
- Each new account gets 10 free pages to try it, valid for 7 days, with no credit card. After that it's paid per page, with monthly plans or one-off packs.
- Do I need to install anything?
- No. Everything runs in the browser. You can also use it from ChatGPT or Claude.
- How many files can I upload at once?
- Up to 50 files per batch. You can download them one by one or as a single ZIP.
- How long does it take?
- Most documents are ready in 10 to 30 seconds. Long files take a little longer.