OCR PDF (Searchable)
Turn a scanned PDF into a searchable, selectable PDF, free. Reads each page on your device and adds an invisible text layer behind the original page image, so nothing is uploaded.
How to use OCR PDF (Searchable)
- Click or drop the scanned PDF you want to make searchable.
- Pick the language the document is written in.
- Click "Make searchable" and wait for OCR to finish, then download the result.
About OCR PDF (Searchable)
OCR PDF (Searchable) is a free Becoderr tool. It needs no sign-up, runs fast and privately, and works right in your browser for most tasks. For the few server-based tools, your files are processed in memory and discarded immediately after the operation.
Frequently asked questions
Is my PDF uploaded to a server for OCR?
No. Each page is rendered and read entirely in your browser using an OCR engine that runs locally; nothing is uploaded.
Will the PDF look different afterward?
Visually it should look the same, since each page image is kept and the recognized text is added as an invisible layer behind it. If the PDF already had real text, that text is replaced by a flattened page image plus the new OCR layer.
Which languages can it read?
You can pick English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), Hindi, Arabic or Russian from the language dropdown before running OCR.
Is there a limit on how many pages it can process?
There's no hard page limit, but every page is rendered and read one at a time in your browser, so very long documents take longer and use more memory. It works best on documents up to a few dozen pages.
What happens to text the OCR engine isn’t confident about?
Words the engine recognizes with low confidence are skipped from the invisible text layer entirely, rather than adding likely-wrong text that would make searches miss or mismatch.