✦ 100% Free — 100+ languages supported
Tool — OCR

OCR PDF

Make scanned or image-based PDFs searchable and selectable. Powered by Tesseract.js — runs entirely in your browser across 100+ languages. No cloud API needed.

Click to choose or drag a scanned PDF here
All processing stays on your device

How to use the OCR PDF tool

PDFZero uses Tesseract.js to run OCR (optical character recognition) on scanned or image-based PDFs, making the text inside them searchable and selectable — in over 100 languages including Hindi, Arabic, and Chinese. Everything runs locally in your browser; no cloud API or upload is involved.

Steps

  1. Click the drop zone above and choose the scanned PDF you want to make searchable.
  2. Select the language(s) present in the document for the best recognition accuracy.
  3. Click Run OCR — text recognition happens locally using Tesseract.js.
  4. Download the new PDF with a searchable, selectable text layer.

Why use this tool?

Scanned documents are just images — you can't search, copy, or select text in them. Running OCR adds an invisible text layer so the document behaves like a normal digital PDF: searchable, copy-pasteable, and accessible to screen readers.

Frequently asked questions

How accurate is the OCR?

Accuracy depends on scan quality, font clarity, and language. Clean, well-lit scans typically recognize text very accurately; low-resolution or skewed scans may have more errors.

Which languages are supported?

Over 100 languages, including Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, and most major world languages — select the right language for best results.

Is my scanned document uploaded to a cloud OCR service?

No. OCR runs entirely in your browser using Tesseract.js (WebAssembly), so even sensitive scanned documents stay local.

Will OCR change the appearance of my document?

No, OCR adds an invisible text layer underneath the existing scanned image — the visual appearance of the PDF doesn't change.

Is there a limit on how many pages I can OCR?

No server-imposed limit, though OCR is computationally intensive, so very long documents will take more time depending on your device.