Get the text out of a scanned PDF
The words from every scanned page, as a text file you can paste into an email, a document or a spreadsheet.
- Nothing is uploaded
- Works offline after first use
- Open source
- No watermark · limit is your device’s memory; phones hold less
Get the text out of a scanned PDF as a plain .txt file, along with a searchable copy of the PDF. It is free, needs no account and adds no watermark, and your files are not uploaded: everything runs in your browser on your device. The first run downloads the text reader (about 6 MB) and the WebAssembly engine that runs it to your browser, and after that the tool works offline.
Done
Open the network tab. Your files never appear in it.
Add files and run the tool to see every request this tab makes.
Your files are processed on this device and never sent to a server. Reload the page to clear everything from memory.
Copying from a scan gets you nothing, because the page is a picture of the words. This page reads the picture and hands you the words as a .txt file, page after page, plus a searchable copy of the PDF in case you want to find something in the original layout later.
A worked example: a two-page letter from your insurer, scanned to insurer-letter.pdf, and you need to quote a paragraph of it in a complaint. Drop it here; Every page and the .txt box are already chosen. Press Get text and you get insurer-letter.txt, also shown under the download with a Copy button, and insurer-letter-searchable.pdf.
The text follows the page from top to bottom, with a blank line between blocks. Two-column layouts are usually read column by column, but a table comes out as rows of words without its grid, so check figures against the scan before you rely on them.
How it works
- Drop the scanned PDF; the .txt option is already ticked.
- Press Get text.
- Copy the text shown under the download, or save the .txt file.
In your browser, not on a server
pdf.js (Apache-2.0) renders each page in your tab at 300 dpi (large pages a little less). Tesseract (Apache-2.0), compiled to WebAssembly by tesseract.js with its English LSTM model, finds every word and its box; the engine and model, about 6 MB, are downloaded from this site on first use and cached. pdf-lib (MIT) then writes each word into the page as invisible text (render mode 3) in Helvetica, placed on the word’s baseline and stretched to the word’s width, so a search highlights the right spot. The scanned image itself is not touched. Pages that already have a text layer are skipped unless you ask otherwise.
Compared with upload-based tools: Online OCR services upload the scan to their servers, and free tiers cap pages or files a day. Scans are often the documents people least want copied: IDs, signed contracts, bank and medical letters. Here the reading happens on your device, with no page limit, and the output is your own PDF with a text layer rather than a Word file that loses the layout.
Verify it yourself. Give the page a short while after your first run to save itself for offline use, then turn off Wi-Fi or switch to airplane mode and run the tool again. Or open your browser's developer tools (F12, or Cmd-Option-I on a Mac), pick the Network tab, and watch it while you convert. The panel above does the same count for you.
Questions
Can I get a Word document instead?
Paste the text into Word or Google Docs. For a Word file that keeps the layout, run the searchable PDF from this page through PDF to Word; it needs the text layer this page adds.
Why is there a strange character here and there?
OCR guesses each letter from its shape, so smudges and stains can turn into stray marks, and l, 1 and I are easily confused. Proofread names and numbers.
Does it read handwriting?
Only very neat block capitals, and even then with mistakes. It is made for printed and typed text.
Is the scan uploaded?
No. The text is read in this tab, so letters about your health, money or legal matters stay on your device.
More PDF tools
OCR PDF
Text recognition for scanned pages, run on your own device: the PDF looks the same, but now you can search it and copy from it.
Merge PDF
Combine PDFs into one document and set the order with the arrows. No watermark, nothing uploaded, and the size limit is your device’s memory (phones hold less).
Split PDF
Pull out the pages you need, or break a document into single pages. Done on your device.
Compress PDF
Shrink a PDF for email or an upload limit. Pick a level, or type the size you need, like 1 MB, and the page tries the gentlest setting that fits. Processed on your device.
Other conversions
Guides
- How to make a scanned PDF searchableA scan is a photograph of paper, not text, which is why you cannot search it. Here is how OCR adds a text layer, and a free browser tool for it.