Scan to Searchable PDF

Photograph or upload a document, enhance it, then export a PDF with selectable OCR text.

About this tool

OCR PDF — Make a Scanned PDF Searchable Offline

Turn an image-only scan into a searchable, selectable PDF with on-device OCR. Everything runs locally in your browser — no upload, no sign-up, no watermark and no file size limit.

Word-Accurate Text Layer

Recognised words are positioned at their exact coordinates, so copying a paragraph out of the PDF returns clean, ordered text.

Nine Languages

English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Turkish and Russian. Each language pack is downloaded once, then cached for offline use.

Confidential-Safe OCR

Cloud OCR services keep a copy of what you send. Here the recognition engine is compiled to WebAssembly and runs in your tab.

How to use it

  1. Click Upload and choose the scanned PDF. Photos (JPG, PNG or WebP) work too, and you can add several files.
  2. Every PDF page is added as its own page at 200 DPI, already cropped to the full page. Click Continue to filter & OCR.
  3. Pick a filter: Original Color keeps the scan as it is, while Enhanced Color and Magic B&W Scanner clean up grey paper and shadows.
  4. Choose the OCR language of the document, for example English or Deutsch.
  5. Click Run OCR & export and download searchable-scan.pdf. The result shows how many words and characters were recognised.

Frequently asked questions

Does OCR change how the page looks?

A little. Each page is saved as an image with the filter you pick — Original Color keeps it as it was, Enhanced Color whitens the paper — and the recognised text is laid invisibly on top, like a sandwich PDF.

What if my PDF already has selectable text?

Then it does not need OCR. Running it anyway turns the pages into images with a new text layer, so the original text loses quality. Use OCR for scanned pages only.

Are my scanned PDFs uploaded to a server?

No. Toolula processes the document inside your browser tab with pdf-lib and WebAssembly, so the file never leaves your device.

Is it really free?

Yes. You can use every Toolula PDF tool for free, without an account. The free plan has fair-use limits; Toolula Pro, an optional plan, raises them and adds advanced features.