OCR a scanned PDF

Recover the text from a scanned document so it becomes searchable.

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Scan, chat with, and transform your documents. Convert, compress, merge, split and more — free to use.

Drag & drop your PDF here or PDF up to 50MB · or scan with your camera

A scanned PDF is a picture of text: you cannot search it, copy from it or ask questions about it. OCR reads the characters back out and makes the document behave like a real text document again.

How to oCR a scanned PDF

  1. 1Upload the scanned PDF.
  2. 2Run OCR to recover the text.
  3. 3Search it, copy from it, or ask questions about it.

Questions people ask

Does OCR change how my document looks?

No. The pages are untouched — only the recovered text behind them is added.

How accurate is it?

Clean, straight scans read very well. Low-resolution, skewed or handwritten pages are much less reliable.

Can I run OCR more than once?

Yes. It rebuilds the text each time, so re-running is always safe.

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Everything you can do, in one place

Free to use No account, no signup, no payment.
Encrypted in transit Your library is private to your device. Privacy policy.
Answers you can check Every AI answer cites the page it came from.
Works everywhere Install it as an app on phone or desktop.

The PDF toolkit that reads your documents too

Doclium is a free web app for working with PDFs: merge, split, compress, rotate, protect and convert them in your browser, with no install and no signup to start. Where most PDF tools stop at the file, Doclium also reads it — ask a question and get an answer that cites the page it came from, so you can check it.

Chat with a PDF, summarise a long report, or translate one into another language. Clean documents up with OCR, redaction, watermarks, headers and footers, page numbers and A4 or Letter resizing. Every change can be undone, and every export is previewed before it downloads.

Private by default Your library is yours alone. Documents are scoped to your account or device and are never readable by another user.
HTTPS everywhere All traffic is encrypted in transit with TLS. Your files are not used to train AI models.
Answers with citations The assistant quotes the passage and page behind each answer, so nothing has to be taken on trust.
Free to use The tools are free, with no watermark added to your output and no account needed to begin.

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