OCR a PDF so every word becomes searchable
Upload a scan or image — OCR creates a searchable PDF automatically.
Common questions
What does OCR do to a PDF?
It adds a text layer behind the scanned page, so you can search, select and copy words while the page still looks like the original scan.
Can I upload an image instead of a PDF?
Yes. JPG, PNG, TIFF, BMP and WebP images can be wrapped into a PDF and read with OCR in the same run.
How do I know whether my PDF needs OCR?
Try selecting a sentence. If nothing highlights, the page is an image. You do not need to decide first — the conversion pipeline checks for a text layer automatically.
Is the result really searchable?
Yes. The acceptance check for this page extracts text from the produced PDF rather than trusting that an OCR tool merely ran.
Will it change how the pages look?
The visible scanned page remains in place while an invisible text layer is added. Recognition can be imperfect on handwriting, blur or very small print.
How large can the PDF be?
Up to 10 MB. Documents longer than 20 pages are processed up to their first 20 pages — 100 on a paying account — and the result reports when that happened.
Can I get Word instead?
Yes. Choose Word in the output control and the scan is rebuilt as an editable DOCX document.
Is OCR free to try?
Yes. Your first OCR conversion can run without an account.
Is there a watermark?
No. The searchable PDF is not watermarked.
Is the example above genuine?
Yes. It uses the real image-to-document OCR result shown on the conversion feature page.