← All tools | 🔤 PDF OCR
What to expect from browser OCR
Works well — Clean printed scans, English text, under 50 pages
⚠️ Mixed results — Hindi/regional languages (70–80% accuracy), phone camera photos, low contrast scans
Not recommended — Handwritten text, documents over 100 pages (very slow), image quality below 150 DPI
OCR takes 3–8 seconds per page in your browser. A 30-page document ≈ 3 minutes. A 100-page document ≈ 10 minutes. We recommend splitting large PDFs first.
Split your PDF first →
Step 1 — Upload scanned PDF
🔍
Drop scanned PDF here or click to browse

PDF only · Processed entirely in your browser

⚠️ This PDF appears to already have selectable text.
OCR is designed for scanned/image PDFs with no text layer. For digital PDFs, PDF to Word will give better results.
Go to PDF to Word →
Step 2 — OCR Settings
Non-English accuracy is 70–85%. Always verify important extracted text.
Quality Mode
Output Format
Processing
Initialising OCR engine...
Extracted Text Preview
✅ OCR Complete
Continue working with this PDF
How to use
  1. Upload your scanned PDF — the tool checks whether it is image-based or already has text
  2. Select the document language and quality mode (Fast for clean scans, Accurate for faded/low-quality)
  3. Choose output: Plain Text for copy-paste use, or Searchable PDF to keep the original layout with a selectable text layer
  4. Click Start OCR and wait — each page takes 3–8 seconds; keep the tab active for best performance

Supported languages: English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Gujarati.

Frequently asked questions
Does it work on Hindi and regional language documents?

Yes — select your language before starting. Accuracy is 70–85% for Indian languages. Always verify important extracted text against the original, especially numbers, names, and dates.

Why is OCR slow in the browser?

OCR analyses every pixel on every page using your device CPU. Server-based tools use dedicated GPU hardware in datacentres. Browser OCR is slower but keeps your document completely private — it never leaves your device.

Will it work on handwritten text?

Tesseract.js has very limited handwriting recognition. For clearly printed or typed scanned documents it works well. For handwritten documents, results will be poor.

Is my document uploaded to any server?

No. Everything runs in your browser using Tesseract.js and PDF.js. Your PDF is loaded into browser memory and never transmitted anywhere.

My document has 300 pages — will it work?

Yes, but it will take 15–40 minutes. We recommend using Split PDF to divide the document into 50-page chunks first for better reliability.

How to OCR a Scanned PDF

  1. Upload your scanned PDF — the tool automatically checks whether the document already has a selectable text layer or is purely image-based.
  2. Select the document language: English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, or Gujarati. Selecting the correct language significantly improves recognition accuracy.
  3. Choose the output format: Plain Text to extract all recognised characters into a text file, or Searchable PDF to add an invisible text layer beneath the original page images.
  4. Click Start OCR and keep the tab active — each page takes 3–8 seconds. Download the result when the progress bar completes.

Why use LovelyPDF

OCR runs entirely in your browser using Tesseract.js — your scanned documents are never uploaded to any server. Scanned Aadhaar cards, government letters, court orders, and medical reports that you need to make searchable or extract text from are processed locally without any data leaving your device.

No account is required. All eight supported languages, both output modes, and all quality settings are freely available without registration. There is no page limit and no document count cap — run OCR on a single scanned page or a multi-page government gazette with the same tool.

The tool works on any device with a modern browser. Process a scanned document on your phone to make it searchable before forwarding, or OCR a batch of archived reports on your desktop to enable text search across your document library. No specialist software or operating system is required.

Frequently Asked Questions

How accurate is the OCR for Indian language documents? +

Accuracy depends on scan quality and font clarity. For clean, high-resolution scans of printed text in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, or Gujarati, Tesseract typically achieves 85–95% character accuracy. Handwritten text, very small fonts, or faded prints reduce accuracy significantly. Always select the correct language before starting — running English OCR on a Hindi document will produce meaningless output.

What is the difference between Plain Text and Searchable PDF output? +

Plain Text extracts all recognised characters into a .txt file — useful for copying into Word, pasting into forms, or feeding text into other tools. Searchable PDF keeps the original page images exactly as they are and adds an invisible text layer beneath them. The document looks identical to the original scan but the text is now selectable, copyable, and findable with Ctrl+F in any PDF reader.

How long does OCR take? +

Each page takes 3–8 seconds depending on page resolution, content density, and your device's processing speed. A 10-page scanned document typically completes in 30–60 seconds. Keep the browser tab active and in the foreground during processing — some mobile browsers throttle JavaScript execution for background tabs, which can significantly slow OCR or cause it to stall.

My document is already digital — why does the tool say it has a text layer? +

Digital PDFs created by Word, Excel, or a PDF printer already contain a selectable text layer — OCR is not needed and would not improve them. The tool detects this and warns you before running unnecessary processing. If you need to extract text from a digital PDF, use the PDF to Word tool or the PDF to Excel tool instead.