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Extract Text From a Scanned PDF — OCR Free

Published 2026-05-11 · Updated 2026-08-08

5 min read

Why scans feel "dead"

If Cmd+F finds nothing, the PDF is just pictures of text. OCR can recognize that content and export it as a separate text file for copying or review.

ExactPDF OCR flow

  • Open OCR PDF.
  • Confirm the scan is in English; the free browser model is English-only.
  • Download the recognized text as TXT, Markdown, or JSON. The source PDF is
    • left unchanged and no hidden text layer is added.

    Privacy note

    Enterprise OCR vendors log uploads. ExactPDF keeps the scan on-device — HIPAA and litigation teams sleep easier.

    Run OCR — free, local →

    Free Tool
    Try OCR PDF

    Add a searchable text layer to scanned PDFs with local Tesseract OCR.

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