Best Free PDF Editor with OCR Support

Make any scanned PDF searchable and editable. OCR processing happens locally in your browser.

What is OCR and Why Do You Need It?

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology converts scanned images and PDFs into searchable, editable text. When you scan a document, it becomes an image rather than selectable text. OCR solves this by recognizing characters and making them fully editable.

Our OCR editor works entirely in your browser, keeping your documents private while converting them to searchable format.

How to Use OCR in Our PDF Editor

1. Upload scanned PDF — Drag and drop your scanned file
2. Select OCR option — Choose "Make Searchable" from the menu
3. Process document — Wait for OCR to recognize text
4. Review and edit — Verify recognized text accuracy
5. Save result — Download your searchable PDF

Supported Languages and Document Types

• English, Spanish, French, German, Italian
• Multi-language documents
• Business cards and receipts
• Books and manuscripts
• Handwritten text (with limitations)

OCR Editor Comparison

Common OCR Use Cases

OCR technology benefits many workflows:

• Archive digitization — Convert paper records to searchable digital
• Contract management — Make scanned contracts searchable
• Invoice processing — Extract data for accounting
• Research papers — Enable text search in scanned documents

"We converted thousands of old invoices to searchable PDFs. The OCR was fast and accurate, saving our team hundreds of hours."

Code for OCR processing:

// Initialize OCR processing
const pdfDoc = await PDFLib.load(fileData);
const pages = pdfDoc.getPages();

// Apply OCR to each page
for (const page of pages) {
  const text = await performOCR(page.getImage());
  const textPage = pdfDoc.embedText(text);
  page.append(textPage);
}

// Save searchable PDF
await pdfDoc.save();