OCR to Searchable PDF
Turn scans and image-only PDFs into a searchable, selectable PDF — 10 languages
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Frequently asked questions
How is this different from the plain OCR tool?
The plain OCR tool gives you the recognized text as a .txt file. This tool keeps the original page images exactly as they look and adds an invisible text layer underneath — the result is still a PDF that looks like the original, but you can now select, copy and search its text.
Will the pages look any different?
No — the visible page images are untouched. Only an invisible, searchable text layer is added underneath them.
What languages are supported, and how many pages?
Simplified and Traditional Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Spanish, German, Russian and Portuguese, up to 20 pages per file. Choose a combined option like “中文 + English” for mixed-language documents.
Does OCR change how my scan looks?
No — the image layer stays byte-preserved. Only the hidden text layer is added, which readers index but never display.
OCR pipeline details
Recognition runs Tesseract across 100+ languages with per-page script detection:
- Layer placement — recognized words position exactly over their pixels, so selection highlights match what you see.
- Mixed languages — choose a primary language plus English fallback; bilingual scans handle per page.
- Skip-if-text rule — pages already containing real text pass through unmodified instead of double-processing.
How it works
- 1
Upload a scanned PDF or a photo/screenshot of a document.
- 2
Pick the document's language (mixing with English is supported).
- 3
Download the searchable PDF — text can now be selected, copied and found with Ctrl+F.
Scans that behave like real documents
Image pages get an invisible, searchable text layer underneath — copy-paste and Ctrl+F work while the visual stays untouched.
Scans become searchable
A scanned page is stored as a picture inside the PDF, and this tool adds a searchable text layer on top, so the file can be searched like a digital document.
Invisible text layer
The text sits invisibly under each page, ready for Ctrl+F, selection and copy-paste, while the visible scan stays exactly as it was scanned.
Keeps the original look
At most 20 pages of images or PDFs are processed in one job, and the output keeps the original layout instead of reflowing the document.
Related tools
What Is a Searchable PDF?
A searchable PDF looks exactly like your scan but carries an invisible text layer beneath the page image, so the document becomes searchable, selectable and copyable in any PDF reader — while the visual page stays identical to the original scan. This tool builds that layer with server-side OCR: upload a scanned image or an image-only PDF, choose from 10 languages, and Tesseract reads the pages and writes a new PDF with the recognized text embedded invisibly behind the original page images. You can then search through a contract for a keyword, select a sentence, copy a paragraph, or let document software index the file. It is for archivists digitizing paper records, lawyers and accountants scanning contracts, and anyone whose scanner produces beautiful PDFs that cannot be searched. The tool requires an account and consumes credits.
What this tool can do
- Add an invisible, selectable text layer to scans and image-only PDFs
- Recognize 10 languages, from simplified and traditional Chinese to English, Japanese, Korean, French, Spanish, German, Russian and Portuguese
- Keep the original page images exactly as scanned — nothing visual changes
- Process multi-page documents in one pass into a single searchable PDF
- Allow selecting and copying text in any PDF reader
- Download the finished searchable PDF directly from the page
When you'll use it
- Making a scanned contract searchable so you can find clauses by keyword
- Building a searchable archive of paper documents and receipts
- Converting scanned lecture notes into a document you can quote
- Preparing scanned forms or evidence for search and citation
- Sending a client a PDF where they can select text instead of squinting at a scan
Privacy and limits: the OCR runs on the site's VPS — your scans are uploaded for processing and deleted after the job completes. The tool requires an account and consumes credits. Recognition quality mirrors the source material: clean, straight, high-contrast scans produce a near-perfect text layer, while low-quality or handwritten pages can hide errors in the invisible text, so verify important documents after conversion.