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OCR — Extract Text

Extract text from a scanned PDF using optical character recognition (OCR).

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Scanned or image-based PDF

PDF OCR Free Online — Extract Text from Scanned PDFs and Images

FusionPDF's OCR tool uses Tesseract.js to recognize and extract text from scanned PDFs, image-based documents, and photographed pages — directly in your browser. Convert a scanned PDF into a searchable, copy-paste-ready text file without uploading anything to a server.

How to Run OCR on a PDF

Drop your scanned PDF or image-based PDF into the upload area. Select the document language to improve recognition accuracy. The tool renders each page using PDF.js and runs Tesseract.js OCR on every page. Click Run OCR and download a .txt file with the recognized text from every page in reading order.

When to Use PDF OCR

OCR is essential when working with scanned books or archives, photographed receipts or invoices, faxed documents saved as PDF images, legacy contracts stored as image-only PDFs, or any PDF where you cannot select or copy text because it has no embedded text layer.

Why Use FusionPDF for OCR

FusionPDF runs OCR entirely in your browser using Tesseract.js — your scanned documents never leave your device and are never processed on a server. The tool is free, supports multiple languages including English, French, German, Spanish, and more, and requires no account or software installation.