OCR PDF
Convert scanned PDF to searchable text.
Frequently Asked Questions
How accurate is PDFtiny's browser-based OCR?
PDFtiny uses Tesseract.js, the leading open-source OCR engine, running locally in your browser via WebAssembly. For clean scans with good contrast, accuracy typically exceeds 97–99% for English text. Accuracy depends heavily on scan quality, resolution (200+ DPI recommended), and document clarity.
Does PDFtiny's OCR support Hindi, Tamil, or other Indian languages?
Yes. Select your document language from the language dropdown before running OCR. PDFtiny supports 50+ languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, and more.
What is the difference between OCR PDF and PDF to Text?
PDF to Text extracts text that is natively embedded as text characters in the PDF — instant and 100% accurate. OCR PDF visually reads scanned images of text using machine learning — necessary for documents that are photographs or scans with no embedded text layer.
Will OCR modify my original PDF or create a new one?
OCR creates a new output PDF with an invisible searchable text layer added over the original scan. Your original document pages remain visually identical — only text search and copy functionality is unlocked.