Add a selectable, searchable text layer to scanned PDFs. First-class Arabic OCR, plus English and French. Free, no sign-up.
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PDF files up to 50MB and 50 pages
Drop in a scanned PDF (up to 50MB and 50 pages) from your device or Google Drive.
Choose Arabic, English, or French (or a mix), then let the OCR engine recognize the text on every scanned page.
Get the same PDF back with an invisible text layer — now you can search, select, and copy the text.
OCR (optical character recognition) reads the pixels of each scanned page and converts what it sees into real text. We place that text as an invisible layer exactly on top of the original scan, so the document looks identical but becomes searchable and copyable. Pages that already contain text are skipped by default so nothing is overwritten.
Upload, process, download. No account and no credit card — ever.
Files are deleted from our servers within 1 hour — most immediately after processing. We never read or share your documents.
OCR (optical character recognition) turns pictures of text — like scanned pages or photographed documents — into real text a computer can read. This tool adds that recognized text as an invisible layer inside your PDF, so the file looks exactly the same but becomes searchable, selectable, and copyable.
Arabic is a first-class language here, not an afterthought — we use the Tesseract engine with its dedicated Arabic model, which handles connected script and right-to-left text properly. Accuracy is good but not perfect: it depends heavily on scan quality, so clean 300-DPI scans of printed text work far better than blurry photos or handwriting. For best results, scan straight, well-lit pages.
Files can be up to 50MB and 50 pages. OCR is genuinely slow — expect roughly 1–2 seconds per page — so larger documents would time out. If your file is bigger, split it with our Split PDF tool and OCR the parts separately, or compress it first.
If every page already contains a text layer (for example, a PDF exported from Word), there is nothing for OCR to add, so we tell you instead of silently returning the same file. If the existing text is wrong or garbled, enable "Re-OCR pages that already have text" to replace it with freshly recognized text.
OCR runs on our server, since text recognition is too heavy to do in your browser. Your file is processed in temporary storage and automatically deleted within 1 hour — we never read, share, or keep your documents.
Yes — a great workflow is to OCR the scan here first, then run the searchable result through our PDF to Word tool. Without the OCR step, a scanned PDF converts to Word as images; with it, you get editable text.
Upload your scanned PDF, tick the recognition languages it contains (Arabic, English, or French), and click the OCR button. Processing takes roughly 1-2 seconds per page, then the searchable PDF downloads with an invisible text layer added over each scan.
Three languages are supported: Arabic, English, and French. You can select any combination for mixed-language documents, such as Arabic contracts with English clauses. At least one language must be selected before running OCR.
No. The recognized text is placed as an invisible layer exactly on top of the original scan, so the document looks identical — stamps, signatures, and layout untouched — but becomes searchable and copyable.
Files can be up to 50MB and 50 pages. OCR is computationally heavy — roughly 1-2 seconds per page — so larger documents would time out. Split bigger files with the Split PDF tool and OCR the parts separately, or compress oversized files first.
Expect roughly 1-2 seconds per page, so a 30-page scan can take about a minute. OCR jobs run one at a time on the server; at busy moments you may be asked to retry in a minute.
Accuracy is good but never perfect, and depends heavily on scan quality. Clean, straight, well-lit 300-DPI scans of printed text give excellent results; blurry photos, skewed pages, and low-resolution scans reduce accuracy in any OCR system.
Not reliably. The recognition engine is designed for printed, typeset text. Neat block capitals may partially recognize, but cursive handwriting — in any language — generally will not. Handwritten notes and signatures stay visible in the PDF; they just will not become searchable text.
No, encrypted PDFs are rejected with a clear message. Remove the password first with the Unlock PDF tool, run OCR on the unlocked file, then re-protect the result if needed.
Yes, completely free — no sign-up, no watermarks, and no premium tiers today. Because OCR is the heaviest tool on our servers, usage is limited to 5 documents per 15 minutes, which covers normal use comfortably.
All uploaded files are automatically deleted from our servers within one hour, most immediately after processing. We never read, store, or share the contents of your documents. No permanent storage is maintained.
The tool reports specific problems: files over 50MB or 50 pages, password-protected PDFs, pages that already have text, or a busy server. Each message says what to do — split, unlock, enable re-OCR, or retry in a minute.