Best OCR for Scanned PDFs: 8 Free Tools Compared

A scanned PDF is a stack of page pictures with no text inside. OCR reads those pictures and either lays an invisible text layer over them, which gives a searchable PDF that still looks like the scan, or hands you the text on its own. Tools differ on which of these they return, so decide that first.

We ran one public-domain book page each in Arabic and English through the tools we could drive, and scored the text against the Wikisource transcription of the page. The score is the share of characters wrong, so lower is better, and gaps under three points are ties because the reference itself is imperfect.

The pages went in as images, not PDFs, with one exception noted in the proof below. Google Drive, iLovePDF, Adobe and Sejda were not run: the facts for those come from their own pages. Method, dates and the other scripts we tested are in the OCR accuracy comparison.

Upload the file at Make PDF Searchable. FastOCR reads 100+ languages, works out the language itself, and returns a searchable PDF whose text copies in the right order, including right-to-left scripts. The website also offers text, Word and Markdown downloads.

Prefer to keep the file local? The free Mac and Windows apps are in public beta, run offline, and make searchable PDFs, text, Word and Markdown. They are OCR and export tools, not PDF editors.

In our scan test: 2.6% of the Arabic page's characters wrong and 3.3% of the English page (lower is better).

PDF24 says no registration is required, that its tools are free thanks to advertising, and that files are deleted from its servers after one hour. The tool returns a searchable PDF, and you can join several files into one output.

Its language menu lists Arabic, Urdu, Bengali, Tamil, Chinese and more, but listing a language is not the same as reading it well: on our scans PDF24 got 35.5% of Arabic wrong and 10.1% of English (lower is better). See FastOCR and PDF24.

Source: PDF24 OCR PDF, checked 4 November 2026.

Google says you can convert multipage PDFs or photo files: put the file in Drive, right-click, and choose Open with Google Docs. The help page asks for a file of 2 MB or smaller, text at least 10 pixels high and pages that are right-side up, and says Drive detects the language.

The same page lists Arabic, Urdu, Persian, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Chinese and many more. We did not test it. A scanned book chapter will usually be over the size limit, so check that before planning around it. See FastOCR and Google Drive.

Source: Google Drive Help, checked 4 November 2026.

The OCR PDF page promises a selectable and searchable PDF, and its language list includes Arabic, Urdu, Persian, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and Chinese. It says detection is more accurate when you select the document languages. The pricing page shows OCR PDF on Basic, with OCR PDF (Advanced) only on paid plans.

Its help page says files are kept for a maximum of two hours. We did not test it. See FastOCR and iLovePDF.

Source: iLovePDF OCR PDF, checked 4 November 2026.

Adobe says the file is deleted unless you sign in to save it. The tool page names English, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese and more, and links to a fuller list, so check that list for your script before uploading. We did not test it.

Source: Adobe online OCR, checked 4 November 2026.

The web tool takes PDFs and images, needs no registration and deletes files right after OCR. In our run the second engine got 2.9% of Arabic wrong (lower is better), while the default engine rejected Arabic and got 4.5% on English. Choose the engine by hand. See FastOCR and OCR.space.

Source: OCR.space, checked 4 November 2026. The API limits are on its plans page.

Smallpdf accepts PDFs, offers a searchable PDF and says files are deleted after one hour unless you save them to an account. It has no language menu. Our one Arabic run got 99.1% of the characters wrong (lower is better), and then free downloads were used up, so the other pages were not scored. See FastOCR and Smallpdf.

Source: Smallpdf OCR, checked 4 November 2026.

Sejda lets you choose a searchable PDF, plain text or both, says files are deleted after two hours and permanently removed after processing, and recommends specifying the language. Paid web OCR raises the page limit. We did not test it.

Source: Sejda OCR, checked 4 November 2026.

Resolution matters most. Scan at 300 dpi or higher; a photo taken on a phone needs even light and a steady hand. Straighten skewed pages, keep dark text on a light page, and crop away stains and margins that hold handwriting.

Choose the language the way the tool wants it. PDF24, iLovePDF and Sejda each say that picking the document language improves recognition, while FastOCR and Google Drive detect it. For right-to-left pages, paste a few lines of the output into a text editor and check that the first word sits at the right.

Open the result before you rely on it. Search for a number you can see on the page, and check amounts, dates and names by eye. For text you plan to edit rather than search, try PDF to Text or PDF to Word; to keep the scan and add a text layer, use Make PDF Searchable.

This page covers tools that take a scanned PDF file. For desktop suites and document types such as contracts or medical records, read Best OCR software for scanned documents. For photos, screenshots and free tools of every kind, see Best free OCR tools. Language-specific tools: Arabic OCR and Hindi OCR.