Extract and recognise text from scanned PDFs or images using OCR directly in the browser. Transform non-searchable documents into PDFs with selectable, copyable text. Free, private, no server upload.
Drag your scanned PDF here
or drag the file here
or open the full PDF editor for annotations, signatures and much more.
Drag the scanned PDF or image. The file is processed locally in your browser.
The OCR engine analyses every page and recognises text in Italian, English and many other languages.
Copy the recognised text or download the PDF with the text layer overlaid to make it searchable.
Everything runs in the browser via WebAssembly. Your PDF is never sent to any server.
No upload, no queue. Processing is local and completes in seconds even for large files.
No required account, no credit card, no watermark. Truly free.
PC, Mac, iPhone, Android — just a modern browser. Safari, Chrome, Firefox or Edge.
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) converts text images in a scanned PDF into selectable, searchable text. After OCR, you can select, copy, and search text in the document as if it were a native digital PDF.
OnlinePdfEditor uses Tesseract.js, one of the most advanced open-source OCR engines, to recognize text in English, Italian, and many other languages. The engine uses LSTM neural models trained on millions of documents: it recognizes typographic fonts, italics, bold text, and even legible handwriting. Recognized text is written as an invisible layer overlaid on the original page image — so the document appearance does not change, but the text becomes selectable and searchable.
OCR is fundamentally different from direct text extraction (the 'PDF to Text' tool): that tool only works on digital PDFs that already have a native text layer; OCR works on scans, document photographs, and any PDF where the text is actually an image. After OCR you can use the resulting PDF as input for Word or Excel conversion, getting editable documents even from scanned paper.
Lo strumento 'Da PDF a testo' estrae il testo già presente in PDF digitali nativi. L'OCR invece riconosce il testo nelle immagini: serve per scansioni, foto di documenti, e PDF dove le pagine sono immagini senza strato testuale. Se selezioni testo nel tuo PDF, non hai bisogno dell'OCR.
Parzialmente. Tesseract.js riconosce stampatello chiaro e manoscritto leggibile, ma la precisione è molto inferiore rispetto al testo tipografico. Per corsivo elaborato o calligrafia la precisione può scendere sotto il 70%. Funziona meglio con documenti dattiloscritti o stampati.
The 'PDF to Text' tool extracts text already present in native digital PDFs. OCR recognizes text in images: it is needed for scans, document photos, and PDFs where pages are images with no text layer. If you can select text in your PDF, you do not need OCR.
Partially. Tesseract.js recognizes clear print and legible handwriting, but accuracy is much lower than for typographic text. For elaborate cursive or calligraphy accuracy can drop below 70%. It works best with typed or printed documents.
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is a technology that recognises text in images. It converts scanned documents or photos of text into editable digital text.
The Tesseract.js engine used by OnlinePdfEditor supports over 100 languages, including Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and many more.
Accuracy depends on scan quality. Sharp, high-resolution documents (at least 300 DPI) give excellent results. Blurry or skewed scans may give partial results.
No. OCR happens entirely in the browser via Tesseract.js (WebAssembly). The file never leaves your device.
Yes. You can select the specific page to run OCR on without processing the entire document.
Yes. You can upload a JPEG, PNG or TIFF image directly and get the recognised text.
Free, in the browser, nothing to install. Upload your PDF and go.
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