Searchable PDF, identical pages
The invisible text layer is overlaid on your original pages — nothing is re-compressed or rasterized, so the output looks and prints exactly like the file you started with.
OCR PDF online — free and private
OCR PDF turns scanned and image-only PDFs into documents you can actually use. Optical Character Recognition reads the words in each page image and adds an invisible text layer over the original — the pages look exactly the same, but suddenly you can search them, select text and copy it, just like a born-digital file. The same run also gives you the recognized text as a Word document and a plain text file, and pages that already contain digital text are detected automatically so only real scans are re-recognized. It reads more than 50 languages, from English, Spanish and Hindi to Chinese, Arabic and Japanese, and you can combine up to three for mixed-language paperwork.
Every other OCR site sends your contracts, medical records and ID scans to a server. PDF10x doesn't: the OCR engine runs inside your browser, so the document never leaves your device — there is no upload, no queue and no page limit. Choose Standard quality for clean scans or Best (300 DPI) for small print, limit recognition to a page range, and check the per-page confidence score before you rely on the result. Shrink bulky scans first with Compress PDF, or create the scan itself with PDF Scanner.
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Why use PDF10x to ocr pdf?
50+ languages, zero uploads
Recognize documents in more than 50 languages — combine up to three per run. The engine and language models run entirely in your browser, so sensitive paperwork stays on your device.
Word, text and clipboard output
One run produces every format: a searchable PDF, a Word (.docx) file, a plain .txt file and a copy-ready text preview with a confidence score for every page.
How to ocr pdf online
- 1
Select or drop the scanned PDF you want to make searchable.
- 2
Pick the document's language(s), the recognition quality and, if you like, a page range.
- 3
Click “Recognize text” and watch each page being read — on your device, page by page.
- 4
Download the searchable PDF, Word or text file, or copy the recognized text directly.
Frequently asked questions
Is my scanned document uploaded for OCR?
No. Recognition runs locally in your browser. The only network requests are one-time downloads of the OCR engine and the language models you pick, which your browser then caches — the document itself never leaves your device.
What is a searchable PDF exactly?
It is your original PDF with an invisible layer of recognized text placed precisely over each scanned page. The pages look unchanged, but PDF viewers can now find, select and copy the words — the same technique professional tools call a “searchable image”.
Which languages can it read?
More than 50, including English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Hindi, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese. You can select up to three languages at once for mixed-language documents; each model is downloaded once and cached.
How accurate is the recognition?
On clean, straight scans of printed text, accuracy is typically excellent — and every page gets a confidence score so you can judge the result. Faint, skewed or low-resolution pages are harder; the Best quality setting (300 DPI) helps with small print. Handwriting is not supported reliably by any OCR engine.
What happens to pages that already have text?
The tool detects them automatically. By default their existing text is kept — it is faster and perfectly accurate — and OCR runs only on the genuinely scanned pages. You can force a fresh recognition of every page if you prefer.